On September 11 I walked
through a parking lot and saw the American flag at half-mast in front of the
post office. I wondered which had more
impact on the United States, World War II, a war affecting millions of
Americans, fought on foreign soil, or the planes crashing into the World Trade
Center in the heart of New York City? It
was a dumb question. How could the
impact of each be quantified, and how could they be compared? Probably the question roamed into my mind
because recently I had been in a small house built in 1945. Termites had gotten the floor and parts of
some of the walls, yet the house felt inhabited. I don’t believe in ghosts and I wasn’t
thinking about World War II before going into the house, but after a few
minutes inside it felt as if someone watched us, protective of the house, not
quite ready to share the house. We
decided too much work needed to be done to make the house livable and hit the
road, regretful that a historical treasure like that had been neglected.
Hours later, a sudden
conviction came over me that the presence in the house had been that of someone
who had fought in the war and had sat there many a night remembering the
screams, remembering the artillery shells, remembering the arms and legs shot
off, the look on men’s faces when they knew they would never see home again. Somehow it felt as if the owner of the house
after the war had spent months of days and nights waiting to hear the sound of
Stukas and JU88s diving towards him, mistakenly thinking that this small house
was a small bombed out building on a farm where he and members of his unit were
taking cover from the enemy, and wishing like hell that the whole thing had
never happened.
So the days we experienced
after September 11, 2001 and the overpowering presence of this man’s memories
were jumbled together as I walked through the parking lot. Then I saw a pigeon walking separately from
the other pigeons. She looked confused
and sick. As I got closer I saw that her
beak was a little open and the feathers on the right side of her face were a
sick discolored brown. I started to cry
because I knew she had the canker. This
disease can be cured if caught early enough, but she looked so sick. I knew it was probably too late. I tried to catch her and even though she
couldn’t fly she could still get away from me.
I told her, “I’m not going to try to catch you anymore. When I get into my car if you want me to
bring you to the doctor, walk to the car and I will open the door and let you
in. You are so sick. If you stay here, you will die. If you go to the doctor, maybe they can
help. I don’t want to promise anything
because you pretty sick, but I will bring you if you want to go.” She had stopped and looked up at me while I
was talking.
When I finished walking, I
started the engine. She was ten feet
away to the left of the car. She walked
under the car. I got out and came around
to the right side. By then she was
standing about six feet away. I told her
again I would bring her and opened the door.
She walked over and hopped onto the back seat floor. We made the drive.
Terry, the Operations Manger
at Liberty Wildlife, told me he would leave me a voicemail about the
pigeon. The next day I heard that the
vet did a visual acuity test. The canker
had made its way into the pigeon’s brain.
They gave her some food and let her pass away on her own time. She was
safe from hawks but away from her friends.
Such a hard choice to make. She
bravely tried to get help, but it was too late.
