Posted 2/9/22
“Are not five sparrows sold for *two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Luke 12:6-7
Happy Hump Day you all! 🙂 This week, as they are wont to do, is flying by like a sparrow with some of my overpriced seed hyper-stuffing his cute little beak. Oh, how I love to feed my birds, and, to some extent, the squirrels. My bride and I really enjoy the interplay of the varieties of birds that show up at the Applegate Bird Buffet.
This love of birds got a bit dicey over the weekend, mind you. We had a sparrow or chickadee of some sort Kamikaze into the glass patio door and render himself as dazed and confused as a CDC Guidelines historian. Poor little sweetie just lay there, breathing but obviously not very happy, and nobody but the Lord was watching over him. We wouldn’t have even noticed, but my wife walked by the door and startled, yelled “hawk!”. There was indeed a monster hawk, an enemy to everything we feed and a merciless foe against a stunned little sparrow, perched on the deck rail looking down at our little damaged friend. My wife scared him away…and then we saw what he was licking his chops over…our little friend.
I jumped into action. I grabbed a bird food cup and ushered him into it. (I am NOT an Ornithologist, but I feel confident he was a he because a woman bird would have asked for directions or, more likely, checked out the GPS whereas a guy bird would just say “Hold my Bird Beer” and plow forward.) I carried him in the cup around for a minute, discussing with my wife what to do. We couldn’t very well bring him in as a potential Scooby snack for Silver and Flashlight. I thought about putting him in an aquarium, but we didn’t have one handy that had a lid. We settled into a great plan. My wife’s friend Debe gave us a martin house that was her wonderful, late dad’s that we still have on our picnic table while we wait for Spring to mount it on a pole. It looks kind of like a southern mansion with two floors and long porches on both sides. I set my little sparrow friend at the edge of a room in this mansion and put out a feast of various seeds, and aimed him away from the other birds so he could recover. I admit it wasn’t an ideal plan, but it was the best I could come up with on the fly and I figured he could always duck into a room should the hawk return for him. (Perhaps I overthink as much as I overwrite?). Then we waited. He was obviously alive and breathing, but he just sat there gazing off the porch of his little mansion with food available as needed.
We checked in and hoped…until we came back a couple of hours later and he, presumably, flew off. (Note: due to the price of housing these days, there is a chance he hopped in a room and sublet the other 15 rooms to his sparrow friends, but I am not sure that he was that sharp.) My wife cleans that door, and the house, very well, but it seemed pretty darn dumb to fly into that room with 2 lip-licker felines watching every move. Apparently a happy ending indeed happened. 🙂 (Unless you are a hungry hawk)
Mom is like my little sparrow these days. 🙁 I visited yesterday for an hour or two. She sat squinting, while I fed her supper, looking out the window. She was warm. She had food options and thankfully she will still eat anything I bring to her lip. She is dazed, confused, and motionless for the most part. Glazed eyes. Quite. Nothingness. Oh….and any number of scenarios could show up at any given time and snatch her away. Examples:
- The **turkey buzzard of aspirating her food. At any given time mom, having “forgotten” how to swallow or physically hindered so by the disease, could either inhale food or drink into her lungs and get them infected…or choke on them.
- The coachwhip snake of infection– Infection, often from bedsores, can cause infection if not noticed quickly enough that can lead to sepsis. Very sneaky foe, this one.
- Owls– Three months before Covid-19 was really even a thing (Jan. 2020), I wrongly wrote an article lamenting just how many false alarms there have been in my lifetime and, while carefully not discounting the loss of life of a few hundred worldwide by Covid, I joked about the “real” killer: OWLS. (LINK). I would now group Covid at the head of the line now of the many different flues and viruses that could take mom as quickly as the hawk could have taken my sparrow, however, I stand by the point that Owls(Alz) kills many, many times more every year than Covid will ever kill. That being said, Covid has ravaged nursing homes everywhere. So many of the nursing home patients (mom included) have comorbidities and they have clear last directives prohibiting advanced lifesaving efforts like ventilators…so a virus, very sadly, takes them in flocks.
- Angry Blue Jays– I doubt a blue jay would actively seek out a wounded sparrow, but they do pretend like hawks to scare away competition. Mistakes by the other birds could cause them to die of hunger if they leave or get eaten by a real hawk if they stay and are wrong. Mistakes at nursing homes happen too, and a simple, wrong medicine could cause mom another seizure or worse. We need to pay these nurses better…they have a very hard job and their mistakes can end badly.
- People– Much of the world has given up on seniors in nursing homes. Society seems to value people only insomuch as they can contribute to the economy or society at large instead of valuing them for being made in the image of God. I am NOT talking about those making the excruciatingly hard decision to remove life support and let God take a very terminally-ill person. This is heart-wrenching and a sad reality that we all may face at some point. I am talking about the many, many who would live much longer but face assisted suicide, some at their request and other against it. That is a sad ending to a life that, often with counseling, could turn out differently.
- God– God is the chooser of life or death. We are all terminal even if some are more so than others. None of us are getting out of here alive. He is Sovereign over every facet of every life from beginning to end, and mom, and my sparrow friend, are no different. He uses means, often like disease or clear porch doors, to do His Will within the hardships of living in a fallen world. However this Wonder of Wonders offers something different. Instead of offering a cute metal martin mansion and a handful of bird food, He offers a real mansion and a feast celebration that lasts an eternity…all with no death, illness, Covid, or Dementia. I am forever thankful He scooped me up from my sorry state and gave me this amazing promise…and will keep me, and my soul, safe until my turn to die. At this point, He is all we have and all we need.
#EndALZ
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*Note: the two pennies are worth approximately 1/16 of a denarius which was around a day’s labor. Thus each of the 5 sparrows is worth 1/5 of 1/16th of a day’s work, or 1/80th of a day’s work. If we work an 8 hour day–they worked much more—and 1/80th of our day is what a sparrow is worth and we make $20 an hour at McDonald’s flipping McRibs, each sparrow, in our dollars, is worth $2. This is very cheap and is a much better deal than buying a 6 pack of McSparrow nuggets at McDonald’s.
** Turkey buzzard’s “method of self-defense is to vomit their food, which they can send sailing 10 feet. If a turkey vulture is disturbed or harassed, it will throw up on the animal that is bothering it. Even the vulture babies will vomit on other animals. Though these behaviors might distress people, they serve turkey vultures well. Vulture vomit is an effective predator repellent.” LINK