Broken Beak

I was recovering from a losing bout of the flu. I'd been cooped up in the house, alone with an ancient diabetic cat in more dire straights than myself and a crippled dog, limping from an old injury she sustained to her leg as a puppy. Enough of this, I thought to myself, I'm bored and hungry. I showered, dressed shabbily in a bright blue hawaiian shirt, and, already woozy from the effort, shambled out of the house and made my slow way to the nearest cafe for a late, light lunch al fresco. The sunshine and modest exercise would do me good, as would a helping of food of reasonably decent quality. I'm no doctor, but I do know there's nothing healthy about sitting in a dreary house all alone with nothing eat, even if you are still tinging at the corners with influenza.

The cafe was nothing special, although it had an excellent patio shaded by an enormous wisteria trained to a lattice above head. I turned in my order for some pasta and salad, then went outside with a glass of tea and a few breadsticks to find a table in the warm shade. The breadsticks I took for the local grackle and sparrow population.

After seating myself, I began breaking the breadsticks into tiny morsels. A young grackle, canny to what was going on, hopped up on the edge of my table directly across from me, eyeing me with his left, then his right eye expectantly. I carefully tossed a crumb at his feet, which he snatched up immediately and swallowed, looking back at me, asking for more. I obliged him with a larger piece that he had to fly away with to break into smaller pieces. I tossed some handfuls of crumbs to the ground, and the other birds came flocking out of their hiding places in the shrubbery, chittering and chirping excitedly at the prospect of a meal.

My pasta and salad arrived, and the young grackle came back to the table. He perched on the edge and watched me just out of arms reach. I ate the salad, but left four small cherry tomatoes, which I don't care for much anyway. I popped these open with my knife, then slid the bowl over to the bird. He danced back, then moved forward to the bowl as my hand withdrew. He inspected the tomatoes carefully with both eyes, then prodded them. Grabbing one of the pieces, he cackled with what I could only assume was complete delight and flew away. I turned my attention to my pasta, glancing up to watch the other birds still nervously attacking the numerous crumbs on the ground. Every minute or so, the young grackle would return -- I could recognize his scrawny body and green-black head now -- to steal another piece of tomato, cackle merrily, and fly away. I paid him no more attention.

My prescription for curing the flu wasn't that efficacious, although it did feel good to get outside in the warm air and sun. I walked home, feeling both better (warmer) and worse (more tired) than before. I put myself to sleep early, hoping that upon waking the next day I'd find myself rid of the obnoxious virus once and for all. Sadly, I woke the next morning more stuffed than before and looked forward to another dull day locked away in my house sick and alone once more.

As the late afternoon approached and the pangs of hunger with it, I again decided to stroll down to the cafe and get some more sun on the patio beneath the wisteria. I showered, dressed in the same loud blue shirt since I had hardly worn it at all the day before, and once again dizzily walked down to my little cafe. Too sick or lazy to change, I repeated my order for a simple bowl of pasta and a salad, grabbed a glass of tea and a few breadsticks, and settled myself outside in the warm shade of that lovely wisteria vine.

My food came quickly, really before I'd had a chance to begin feeding the birds. No sooner had my plates arrived, than that certain young grackle landed on my table. His beak was wide open, as if he was panting. Fearlessly, he stepped right up to the edge of my salad bowl and looked in. I greeted the young bird politely with a tip of my tea glass, welcoming him to lunch once again but firmly demanding that he refrain from poking at my salad until I had finished with it. I moved the bowl away from him, yet he did not dance away in avian wariness as expected. He simply stood there, open-beaked and silent, looking at me.

I looked back, and wondered about his wide-open beak. I examined him closely. I could have reached out and scooped him up in my hand as easily as I could grab my glass of tea, he was so close. I frowned, drawn in by sadness, when I realized his beak was open because the lower half was snapped and broken, dangling down from the bird's face at a slight angle. Blood crusted the base of the beak where it had become detached from his skull. He couldn't move it, broken as it was. I supposed he'd flown into plate glass window and broken it.

The bird moved closer to me. I reached into the salad bowl and offered him a morsel of lettuce. He nudged it with his broken beak, but having lost the ability to pinch anything between the two halves, tossed his head right and left in pain and frustration. I removed the cherry tomatoes from the salad and smashed them open with my fingers, setting the exploded orbs at the bird's feet. The grackle poked at them, wiggling his exposed tongue in the juices, but he couldn't lift anything up to swallow.

I grimaced and tried to ignore his struggling while I ate my pasta. I glanced up at him once or twice, considering what I could or should do. I could easily grab the bird, as he stood less than a foot away from me on the table and showed no fear of my hand when I offered him food. I imagined that if I did grab him, he'd panic and injure the beak further, perhaps ripping it off entirely. And if I did manage to grab him safely, I wondered if I could repair the beak at all. I'd saved small birds -- blue jays specifically -- before, long ago as a child. I had nursed them back to health with eyedroppers of milk, cornmeal, and powdered multi-vitamins. So, though I could certainly feed the young grackle with an eyedropper of mush, I couldn't imagine how I could reattach the dangling bloody beak.

The grackle serenely closed his eyes while I ate in contemplation. He must have realized he couldn't eat the food I offered him. Perhaps he was reflecting on his dire situation for the first time. So I marveled at him, skinny, green-black, and dangling beak. I wondered what he was trying to communicate, if anything at all. He had no fear of me. He stood there, next to my plate making no move to steal food, with an air of patient calm. He recognized my bright blue hawaiian print, I decided. I looked like some brilliant blue grackle god to him. I posed no threat to him, perhaps even could offer him succor. After all, I'd fed him the day before. He was so calm standing next to my plate, eyes closed, so resigned, so sad.

I reached out towards the bird. He opened his eyes, a little nervous as my hand approached, then he shuddered and closed his eyes again. He stood stock still while I closed my hand across his back and looped my fingers around his neck and under, ever so carefully, his broken beak. His tail feathers spread in anticipation. I held my hand and fingers loosely about his warm, soft, fragile body. He squinted one eye, glancing at me again, then closed it. His tail feathers relaxed like a sigh. I gave him a name then, whispering low so only he would hear it -- Sebastian.

I answered Sebastian's silent prayer with the smallest amount of pressure and an unflinching moment of humanity.