Fourth Form of Madness

My heart saddens as I watch the lifeless techni-coloured form just lie there. Suddenly I realise that someone is about to step on the bird as they walked along texting, totally unaware of the vulnerable bird they were about to step on. There was no time to actually think of something to say so instead I let out a loud shreek! Apparently, by the hundreds of eyes that turned to stare at me, this is not the done thing in public. Luckily my shreek made the person look up to check out the crazy lady and therefore they didn’t step on the bird but instead slightly kicked it along a bit.

That is when I saw a hint of movement in the birds feet and I realised it was alive and coming around. I hovered over the bird as all the other transmuters took a brief look at the bird like it was some kind of alien visiting from out of space rather than the magnificent earthly creature it is, that lives and share the same air as us all. I set the bird upright on it’s feet as it was struggling to do the same for itself. It gradually started to walk around a bit but wasn’t able to fly and I realised I had to get it off the overpass. So I waited with the bird. I waited and waited hoping someone would take an interest in the scene and offer to help. In the end, I decided not to rely on the natural kindness of strangers and I started to treat it like any other emergency scene with minimal resources and I just began nominating random strangers to help, I used plenty of eye contact and a very gruffish, authoritarian voice I save for special occasions. It worked a treat, pretty soon I had three people looking after the bird (yeah I know overkill but I think once I got gruff I didn’t know when to cut it off), as I went and obtained a box from the nearest building.

My first thought was to take him home and nurse him back to health but then I remembered my cat and I quickly realised I would be taking him to a more dangerous environment where his survival would be dramatically reduced. I’m a big fan of mother nature, a great teacher, so I quickly realised I needed to find a park and release the bird into the park and let nature either heal him or have him. So off I went to the nearest park. As I walked I started to experience some form of separation anxiety and copious doubt whether I was doing the best or even right thing for this creature. I almost kept walking right past the park and to my car but I feared I was letting sentiment rather than nature take it’s course and I trust in nature, as basically it is far to powerful to fight, so I let him free near a nice shrub (well to be truthfully I must have gone to about 5 shrubs before I could get myself to set him free).

Just as I was crawling through the shrubs trying to see where he had hid himself away. I heard my name being called across the park. “What on earth are you doing crawling through the garden?”. It turns out I am not the only one that visits inner city parks. Apparently one of my fellow work mates does as well, actually, he is more like my ex-fellow work mate as he recently took another job elsewhere. I was actually relived to see him as I felt I had a sounding board for all my reservations about leaving the bird. His verdict was “M, let nature do it course and step back” followed by “I miss all the weird stuff you do!”.

So I left but I did return in the morning and the morning after that to see if he was still there. He wasn’t. As I walked across the the overpass on Friday morning, two beautiful parrots flew over me making loud bird noises. Me being me, loved to imagine this was him, flying with his friend by his side, freely into the limitless sky.