A Wing and a Prayer

From up here it looks like someone murdered the Holy Spirit.

The pigeon is splayed on its back against the alley’s wet, filthy pavement, its head wreathed in fresh blood. The tail feathers are fanned out, and the smoky blue wings – which are creamy white on the undersides – are half open and akimbo. The head is cocked slightly and a solitary, tangerine eye remains open and fixed on the purple-gray sky as if the pigeon is waiting for someone to descend from the clouds, scoop it up and take it back where it belongs.

I’d heard the soft thump of flesh striking glass, a common enough occurrence in an office building with large picture windows. Usually the bird glances off, tumbles a bit and then claws its way back into the air, no worse for the encounter. But this was different. It sounded different. The flurry of feathers dropped away and down like a diver pitching backwards off the gunwale of a boat. I stood up to look where it had gone.

The pigeon was upright on the ground, two stories below, taking halting steps along the alley and shaking its head, the way people do in cartoons when they’re trying to shake loose some crazy idea. Okay, I thought. It’s disoriented. In a minute or two it’ll flex its wings, scoop up some air and join the thirty or forty of its kin making the mid-afternoon rounds of the downtown sky. Only it didn’t. The head-shaking slowed until the pigeon looked like it was nodding off to sleep.

I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer, asking God to fix whatever was hurting in the bird. I tried to will it to fly. But the impact and fall broke something inside it that was beyond repair. Suddenly, the pigeon started flapping violently and flipped itself onto its back. That’s when I saw the splatters of blood on the ground, the red glistening in its beak. It took two or more shuddering breaths and then it died.

Now I feel as though I’m in mourning. Yeah, maybe it’s a little crazy. I mean, lots of people consider pigeons to be nothing more than “flying rats” that carry diseases and crap on statues and fight over breadcrumbs in the public squares, making a general nuisance of themselves. But I’ve never liked to see birds or other animals in peril or suffering. I always brake for squirrels. If there’s a bug in the house, I catch it, open the door and let it loose outside. Once, when I was living in South Carolina, I stopped my car to help a turtle cross the road because I was afraid the next driver might not notice it and smash it to smithereens.

A couple years ago I made the mistake of leaving a door open to my garage a few days too many. A family of sparrows came in and built a nest in a stack of wood I kept on shelves mounted close to the ceiling, which meant that I couldn’t close the door all summer because the mom and dad sparrows wouldn’t be able to go out and look for food for the babies. One morning I saw that a recently hatched chick had fallen from the perch, hit the roof of the van parked in the garage and tumbled to the cement floor. Miraculously it was still alive. So I put on my leather work gloves, gently scooped the frail creature in my hands and climbed a ladder to put the bird back in its nest. All summer I worried about that chick, wondered if it would survive, wondered if it might have picked up my scent and been rejected by the parents. The next summer I got my answer. We had bought a new house and I needed to take down the wood and there, dry as a fig and half as big, were the desiccated remains of the baby bird. I tried to not let it bother me, but it did, and I felt like I shared some of the blame for the bird’s death, though I can’t say why.

In Luke, Jesus says, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12:6-7). Most folks who read that passage focus on the part about people being really important to God. And while that’s true, it also says that not a single creature on Earth is forgotten by God. Not an ant. Not a flea. Not those annoying bugs that skitter up your nose and buzz in your ear at the height of summer. Not an elephant killed for its ivory, or a bear for its paws. Not the loon that gets caught in a plastic soda can ring carelessly discarded by a boater and drowns. Not the baby sparrow born in my garage. Not the pigeon that, giddy for the gift of flight, mistook a window for the sky and flew straight through death’s open door.

Personally I prefer the other name for pigeons, the one they had before they fell from grace in the eyes of human beings and were relegated to the trash-heap category of pest: Rock Dove. Dove. Symbol of peace.

Symbol of the Holy Spirit.

It’s a little thing, but I’m glad the Rock Dove didn’t die alone. Even though I was two stories up and could do nothing to save it, it wouldn’t seem right for its life to pass without someone noticing. No one, no living creature, should die alone.

Every hair on your head. Every feather. Every first and final breath.