This morning, as I was peacefully making my coffee, a shrill scream comes from my daughter’s room  followed by “MOM!  Come quick!”.  Of course I panicked and thrust myself down the hallway towards her room like a madwoman fearing the worst.  I get there and she explains “I was getting dressed and someone banged on my window!”.  Now I am scared as well, because the shades are drawn and this means that I will have to look behind them or quickly pull them to retract and I have watched enough 80’s horror flicks to know that there is a very good chance that someone will be very close to that window staring right back at me with a hockey mask on.   I swallow my fear and peek behind the shades first and see nothing, nothing is there.  Then I pull the shades and notice that there is a small feather on the window so I look down into the rocks in the landscaping and notice this:

A little bird has crashed into the window and at first was knocked out cold and then Mama bird came along and nudged it and it managed to get itself upright.  I grab my camera because my daughter is too scared to look because of my initial “uh oh” reaction when I thought the bird had gone to a better place.  I snap a picture (by this time the mama had come and gone) to assure her that the bird was alright.  She quickly inquires as to why the little bird was allowed to fly out of its nest when it clearly did not know how to fly.  Didn’t its mama know not to let it?  Sure, why does it always get blamed on the mother? 

I explain to her that when it is time for a baby bird to leave the nest, the mama bird needs to let it go so that eventually it could learn how to fly on its own.  She is perplexed. This conversation continues during breakfast and throughout the drive to school.   “Why would the mama bird let the baby bird jump out of the nest if it may crash into something, like my window?!?!”  Well, it is better to let the baby bird try to fly and help it along when it crashes than to not let it try to and it will never learn how to fly at all. 

As she gets out of the car at school and begins to say goodbye, I tell her “try not to crash into any windows now, okay?”  She gets it, and smiles.   Have a great day, baby birdie.