The entrance to the basement laundry room is directly below my living room window (well, four flights down) and for the past couple of days I heard a plaintive chirping sound emanating from there. Yesterday I went to check and found two little sparrows frantically hopping around the corner of the stairway landing. We annually have lots of these birds nesting around here in the Spanish tiles out back, but I've never seen this behavior before. The larger of the two was hopping more slowly and chirping at a lower volume than the other. I approached them to see if I could help somehow; but of course they totally wigged out, monster that I am, so I left them alone.
The chirping and hopping kept up all day and into the night. Then I noticed this morning that only one bird was still making a noise. When I went to investigate, the larger bird was, of course, dead. I wanted to move the sad little corpse away, but the remaining sparrow acted as though she'd go all Hitchcock on me, so I backed away and left her there with her fallen mate. Her mourning continued all day, the sound of intense sorrow and alarm. There were a couple of moments wherein I wondered if I shouldn't just deal with the dead bird and chase the other away, because it was so hard to listen to; but I got the sense I would be disturbing something almost holy.
Early in the evening there was silence. I walked down knowing what I would find--and there they were: Jack and Nancy Sparrow, lying Romeo and Juliet-like on the cement and already covered with little ants, their story done.
What else could I do but give them a resting place behind a green Eugenia bush?
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