The man had juggled work-related assignments and crises all day.
Like every day.
Meeting deadlines, double checking finished assignments, preparing for things for later in the week, computer glitches, technological failures, dealing with office personalities and politics via phone calls, texts and work-based communication apps, putting off what can wait – on varying levels of success, though dealing with what was put off would be as inevitable as the most immediate crisis now … put off too long, the delayed would become a crisis, too.
He called this day Tuesday.
Though most of his work days, and often even his weekends resembled this day, Tuesday looked like this, well, every Tuesday.
The man allowed himself a “luxury” on Tuesday. He worked from home.
Though “luxury” isn’t the right word. Luxury suggests something that is unnecessary but desired. In truth, working from home on Tuesdays had become a necessity. If he went to the office, he’d never meet the number of deadlines or finish any number of other tasks that needed to be finished by end of day Tuesday, or at least mostly finished. He was still in touch with his co-workers throughout the long day but working from home cut the temptation for him to engage in the chatter of being in the office.
So, he worked from the picnic table on his mostly enclosed back porch, feeling the sun, listening to birds, taking a second to note the scampering of squirrels, overhearing neighbors, breathing fresh air, having a late afternoon cigar.
This Tuesday afternoon, his cigar halfway to ash, a bird flew through the open doorway of the porch. The man noticed the bird fly inside the porch. Not an everyday happening but not an unusual visit, either.
Birds often fly through the open door of the back porch. They fly in alone, flit about, here and there, then find their way out the way they came in.
Other birds, far fewer still, get confused, panicked and disoriented; alone, away from their nest and flock, they cannot find their way back to the open doorway.
They perch from the rafters, or become fixated on the other doorway, the doorway with the netting that closes via magnetic strips running along the seams, the magnetic strips that work for a while then seem to leave a gap as time passes.
So, as this bird became one of the confused, panicked, disoriented creatures, its flight back and forth above his head attracted more and more of the man’s attention. He’d learned to leave such a bird as this one alone. Such a bird eventually finds its way out. It just takes time. Trying to direct such a bird out, to help it along, only makes the panicked flight worse and exhausts the bird, prolonging its escape.
Though the man remembered one bird many years ago that he assumed would eventually escape, only to find it dead on the porch the next morning. That bird never found its way out.
So, on this Tuesday, the man was mindful of the bird’s situation without really letting it distract him from his work.
Until he heard the small “thump.”
The bird had fallen from the rafters and was on its back, motionless on the floor of the porch.
The man rested his cigar in its holder. He rose and looked at the bird on its back.
As a boy, the man’s family lived in a house with a big picture window. Before his mother eventually bought a screen to reduce the glare and reflection, birds often flew full flight into the window. The impact broke some of their necks, killing them immediately, or so he and his sister always assumed. Until a big Bob White thumped into the window.
He and his sister found the Bob White on its back in the grass several feet below the window. The bird was motionless. Still, he picked up a stick and nudged the Bob White off its back. The Bob White flew immediately into the air and was gone. Now, on the rare occasion throughout his life whenever he witnessed a bird fly into something, the man picked up a stick and nudged the bird. More times than not, the bird was still alive and flew away.
So, the man picked up a stick. Before he could nudge the bird, it fluttered upright and flew toward the doorway screen. But instead of flying through the opening, the bird clutched the screen near the opening.
The man approached. He spoke softly to the bird. He held the screen back. The bird squawked, flitted, still did not fly out the opening, but clutched now at the hem of the mesh opening. The man nudged the bird just slightly with the stick, lightly. The bird released the screen and flew away, escaping the porch.
Thirty seconds. It was the best thing the man accomplished in a long, still not finished Tuesday.