Life Unexpected

Sometimes life hands you things you never thought would happen and sometimes life hands you things you don’t want to happen. Maybe those unexpected, unwanted things were never really supposed to happen but then in a slight turn of the wrist or blink of the eye, things change and it just happens.  

The other day I came home to yard full of feathers, the little downy ones beneath the outer layer. Adam greeted me with a bag in hand as he picked up the remaining parts of our little birdy friend.

“Must have been a dove eating on the ground,” he said. We had sprinkled seed there earlier in the week and our new Christmas gifted feeder, still candy cane striped from it's holiday wrapping, seems to be a trap rather than a feeder as the neighborhood cats have taken over our little makeshift sanctuary in the back yard.

Most of the feathers still remain, after a storm, after the rain, after the wind, a path drawn across the backyard forever marking the war zone. The bird maybe would have never died had I not put up a bird trap in my back yard. The little bird’s death would never have been mine to bear, an albatross of someone else perhaps. But these are things I may never know, but I may also never see a feather the same way again.

Now, days after the storm, I watched three little doves sit on the telephone wire above the feeder.

“You know, doves mate for life, don’t they.” I said in passing to Adam. He nodded his head “Yeah”. Lola peered up at the birds on the wire and 2 flitted away leaving one lonesome little dove behind.