See the thing about Catbird is that I hear her in the morning, though I don’t see her. I don’t feel the need to peek my head into the shrubbery to be sure of what is happening. I can hear her. I can hear the change in her song when I come outside. I didn’t look it up in a book — I am witnessing it myself.
I also hear her sometimes when I come home and choose to walk back into the garden rather than through the front door.
Now, she is not the only intriguing inhabitants. I have not looked up who else is back there. I mean, I know the hawk, and hear her cry. And I told you about a whole bunch of other friends in the last post. I learned that the little brown sparrow has a gorgeous song. We also found a ridiculous number of caterpillars that were chomping on our flowering dill, I mean over 12 caterpillars. I thought why- why so many? But, because they were on the dill I didn’t need, and not on my zinnias like the pesky Japanese beetles — I let them be. My son and I made a daily habit of going out to see the caterpillars. And you know what — not all are the same. Meaning, one got to town and was the epitome of the very hungry caterpillar. He must have eaten four to one what he others were, gaining weight and advantage over his siblings. Often, we’d see many of them sleeping, and he was the only one eating. We named him Big Guy.
“Wanna go check on Big Guy?” I’d ask with morning coffee in hand.
“Yeah!” my three year old would cheer and off we would go. We saw him grow his legs, and go from looking like just a mouth on a head to a bit of a face.
We checked on Big Guy at least twice a day — sometimes three. One afternoon, we thought to go check on him (I was hoping to watch the chrysalis form) and he was gone. We looked all over the stalks, even though he’d be hard to miss. We looked at the top of the one plant that reached the overhang where he rode out a mean winter thunderstorm. We peered and peeked.
“No Big Guy,” I said sadly to my son. “Maybe he is in another plant. Maybe he had to leave.”
“Yeah, “ my son said.
Later that night, I brought up Big Guy again, to my son. “I wonder what happened to Big Guy,” I offered.
He looked at me, and said, “A bird probably got him.” Already, at three my kid got the life cycle and I was sure to tuck my emotionality away as he shrugged his shoulders.
So there is that aspect going on right now in our backyard expanse. A bunch of little beings working really hard at their existence, none to fancy, and none guaranteed their next day.
The comforting thing is the humility of it being just what is. It isn’t because the bird was mad that he ate the caterpillar. It isn’t because of the caterpillar’s opinions that he got eaten — life was expanding and contracting. Not one caterpillar made it by the way: a regular bird buffet.
We went to the river the other day and although I didn’t see who gave it to me, I watched what I thought initially was a leaf, but as it twisted and floated, literally in front of my face, I could see that a cardinal had gifted me one of his feathers, mid-flight. I held it in awe. Freshly given. I thanked the bird and then safely tucked it in to my back pocket.
Then I thought, wait. What am I going to do, go put this feather on a shelf and forget? Let this precious anatomy of flight be trapped because I needed to hold rather than have a moment? I stared at the feather, then gently put it on a rock to light up someone else’s day.
I am learning a lot from these birds.