Just a little while ago, I drove up the street to Five Guys for a hamburger – the best hamburgers in the world, by the way.
On my way up the street I spotted what appeared to be a bird sitting in the middle of the road. I carefully went around it, and it didn’t get out of the way. I suddenly felt that seizing in the chest that I felt last week after I hit the bird in Rock Creek.
So, I made a U-turn and went back. I put the flashers on and ran across the 2-lane road, where I saw the bird flailing around – I watched as two cars went right over it, missing it. I scooped up the bird and continued to the other side of the street, where I put it in a grassy area by a tree. It had a wound on it’s tail. I hesitated, not knowing what I should do. I thought to myself that it was not likely to survive; that’s the unvarnished truth of nature. But I made my decision to leave it there in the park on the side of the road. I don’t know if it was suffering. I don’t know if it will die. But I know that if it had stayed in the middle of the street, it would have been terrified over and over by cars driving over it so fast – until one of those cars crushed it.
Perhaps that would have been more humane ultimately. I thought I was doing a good thing, perhaps atoning for what happened last week. In the end, I won’t ever know what happens to this little bird. It may well die there in that park, possibly in pain. But I hope it won’t be scared. Did I do the right thing?
