+ all of the above

Last night I was sitting in the courtyard outside the Hostel which is surrounded by buildings on all sides. While on the phone to Amy something suddenly dropped heavily out of the sky and hit the table on the other side of the courtyard. It feel so heavily that I didn’t think anything would be able to survive it.

I initially thought that it was a rat or something that had trod to close to the edge on the building above. It had also fallen straight down so I thought that it was something that had fallen not flown. Getting closer though it was clear that it was a bird of some sort. The light was bad, so I couldn’t really make much of it out, but I thought that it might be a pidgeon or something similar, since they’re the only birds I’ve seen in New York City.

I sat back down and told Amy all about it over the phone, thinking that I’ll have to get something to dispose of the poor bird somehow. After chatting with Amy for a while, we hung up and I went over to the bird to have another closer look. As I was getting quite close it’s head suddenly whipped right around, and jumped up. I’m not sure which one of us were more surprised that it was still alive. It staggered around and collected itself. It had taken a massive knock and it was still very groggy.

After a short while it tried to fly, which is then that I realised what had happened. It could fly, but not well. It was so small because it was a child. It had fallen not flown because it’s mother had tried to teach it to fly by pushing it off the building above. It had survived the fall because it was a hardass. It couldn’t however fly out of the courtyard. So, with help, we caught it and put it into the park next door, perfectly okay except for probably splitting headache and a slightly swollen eye.

The whole episode reminded me of the following, only this bird had a second chance.

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

D.H Lawrence

The photo below is not the Owl I saw, but is provided for coolness value only. It’s a pretty cool photo.