Stunned
This morning I discovered two morning doves trapped in my screened-in porch. I say “trapped,” but they were only trapped because they were morning doves and had morning dove brains. If they had been mammals, for example, they would probably have noticed there were several giant gaps in the screen, large enough for a morning dove the size of a crow to fly through with room to spare. But they were birds, and so they kept on flying hard, again and again, into the screening, which evidently they couldn’t see.
I opened the door onto the porch and, not surprisingly, they went into an even greater panic of throwing themselves at the screen. I walked to the screen door, which was more or less closed, and opened it. “Come on!” I said, even though I knew they weren’t like dogs and wouldn’t respond as I wished. They just kept thrashing about and flying into the screen.
My first impulse, of course, was to go make my morning coffee, feed the dog, and let the birds take their chances. If I ignored it (I reasoned), the situation would resolve itself, either by successful suicide or by escape. But within a few seconds, I realized that doing nothing would generate guilt, which I have more than enough of already thank you very much. So, I found a pair of garden gloves and went to see if I could carry them outside, where presumably they’d be less upset.
It helped that they were already exhausted by their efforts at self-destruction, so I was able to gently cup one of them in my hands and bring it outside where it immediately flew away, to what kind of life I know not, but at least it wasn’t my water to carry any longer. I went back in and found the second morning dove trapped between the wood frame and the screen, flailing around helplessly on the floor. It was somewhat challenging to get this one out, and I was aware the whole time that its wing might be broken, and I didn’t want to injure it further. So I was pretty delicate in my efforts to extricate it. Finally I did, and I brought it outside. But it didn’t fly out of my hands when I released it. It just sat there placidly in my outstretched palms. So I placed it gently on a patio stone on the deck railing outside the porch. It just sat there. And I stood there.
There we were, the bird and I, bird on the patio stone, me really wanting some coffee but kind of fascinated by the situation. It looked okay, no broken wing or leg as far as I could tell – nothing hanging off its body askew in what I might have described as “just not right.” But it just sat there on the stone, calm as could be. I approached it, got very close to give it a look-over, and it didn’t freak out in the least. In my experience, this was decidedly non-bird behavior. I went inside after a bit and made coffee. When I came back, the bird was still there, in pretty much the same position. I took a couple of photos of it with my phone and considered the situation.
Considering the situation brought me no clarity. There was a morning dove on my deck, on a patio stone, looking at me from the side of its head, which is where its eye was. I couldn’t tell what it was thinking or how it felt about its circumstances. I use the terms “think” and “feel” loosely, of course. I guess I mean what was up with it, as an organism.
There’s something lovely and romantic about a morning dove. I know it’s just a better class of pigeon, but for some reason it embodies a kind of gentleness (when it’s not battering itself in an explosion of feathers against a screen). I imagine it in a tableau with two star-crossed medieval lovers, the outward manifestation of their chaste fin’amors.
I went back inside and sat on the couch with my cup of coffee. The doors to the living room, which gives out onto the deck, are mostly glass, so I could see the bird from my perch on the couch. It wasn’t doing anything. I had done what I could, and it didn’t seem to be holding up its part of the bargain. Instead, it was becoming a conundrum. So I did what any self-respecting modern man would do: I picked up my phone and googled “what to do with an injured bird.”
It will come as no surprise that there was an awful lot of useless bullshit to wade through before I got to a site that talked about “wildlife rehabilitation.” This seemed promising. Evidently there are organizations out there, licensed by the state, which will come to your house and deal with wildlife that needs rehabilitation. These organizations are called, I’m happy to report, “wildlife rehabilitators.” So I looked up “Maryland wildlife rehabilitators” and found a phone number for the Maryland department that licenses them. The nice lady on the other end of the phone gave me some names and numbers. I thanked her, and we hung up.
I looked outside. The bird was still there on the patio stone. I’m sure it hadn’t moved a muscle. It looked like it was sitting on top of a morning dove egg. Had its trauma induced a spontaneous egg-laying? I wondered. Is this what morning doves do when they get upset? Do birds, like so many humans, think that having offspring will solve all their problems? To this and several other vexing questions, I had no answer.
I dialed one of the numbers. It belonged to something called Second Chance Wildlife Center, in Gaithersburg. Was that what I was doing? Was I giving my bird a second chance? Was it my right to do what nature alone would never have done? Had I, by virtue of living in a house with a screened-in porch that had fallen into some disrepair, allowing the birds to enter but making their exit problematic, assumed the moral responsibility of offering them what they would rarely if ever be offered in the natural world? More questions. Still no answers. I began to think of my motionless bird as Socrates, tormenting me with dialectic, bestowing upon me the gift of knowing how little I knew. I glanced over at the incapacitated dove: It was eyeballing me with its tiny little eye. “Do not try and bend the spoon,” it seemed to be saying. “That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth ... there is no spoon.”
Christ. I picked up my phone and called the Second Chance Wildlife Center in Gaithersburg. After two rings, a young, slightly put-upon, hipster-like voice answered; “Second Chance Wildlife Center, please hold.”
Sure, I said. I was actually glad of the reprieve, since I hadn’t really formulated what I was going to say. I put the phone on speaker and went upstairs to get a couple of Advil. I had developed a headache over the past half-hour. I came back down, refilled my coffee cup, and sat down on the couch again. The hipster voice came back, and I was on.
“So,” I said, “I have this screened-in porch and this morning I found two morning doves …”
I looked out the living room windows. The bird was gone.
“Jesus!” I cried out.
“Is something wrong?” asked the Second Chance Wildlife Center.
I walked over to the door, opened it and went out onto the deck. Scanned the back yard. Squirrel: check. Robin: check. European starling: check. No morning doves. I examined the patio stone: No blood or shit or stains, no feathers. No sign there’d been a wounded bird there.
“I know this sounds crazy, but the bird is gone,” I said. “It was just there!”
There was a small sigh on the other end. I wondered if this happened to the hipster a lot, if lonely old people called up just for the conversation. I thought about how he’d put me on hold for over three minutes when I’d first called; maybe he has to handle a non-stop flow of made-up stories about wounded animals. I mean, to be put on hold at 9:30 in the morning by the Second Chance Wildlife Center – what are the chances?
“I don’t see it anywhere,” I said, with not a little embarrassment. “I mean, I just saw it.”
The voice asked me what had happened, and I told him. I told him about the birds trapped in the screened-in porch, the way they were hurling themselves into the screening, the one that flew away when I brought it outside, the one I put on the patio stone. I didn’t tell him it had quoted The Matrix.
“You know, a lot of times birds get stunned and it takes them a while to recover. They’re not physically hurt, just kind of thrown for a loop. So they sit for a while and I think what they’re doing, they’re recovering themselves. And when they’re okay, they fly away.”
“Stunned?” I said, a little bit stupidly.
“Yeah, stunned.”
“Hmm. Well, that sounds promising. So what do you think I should do now?
“Well, keep an eye out. It’s probably fine, but keep an eye out for it, and if it seems to be doing anything out of the ordinary, call us back.”
I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was how the hell was I supposed to tell the difference between this particular morning dove and another one that looked pretty much like it. And how was I supposed to determine that a bird was doing something “out of the ordinary”? I don’t know that I could tell you what was ordinary for a bird. I suppose if I saw a morning dove playing bocci on the lawn or lighting up a blunt, I would consider that unusual. And was I really expected to spend my day “keeping an eye out” for my bird when I had a million things to do?
Instead, I said, “Okay, sounds good. Thanks a lot.”
He said, “Have a nice day.” And we hung up.
You probably think there’s a moral to this story and I’m going to tell you what it is. Sorry. I don’t know if there is one, and if I thought there was, I probably wouldn’t say it out loud. But I guess everything worked out. Try as I might, I found no grounds for guilt, which, for me, is pretty much the definition of success. And if I do encounter a bird in distress someday, I’ll know what to do. I think.