Face-to-face with death

A few months ago I remember quietly thinking to myself, whilst walking though the beautiful forest behind our house in Cornwall—that I do not often see dead birds. 

Well I wish I hadn’t had that thought as since then I’ve seen a dead pigeon split in half on Oxford Street, another in the woods, a couple of dead sparrows and only this morning while watching the trees sway gently in the breeze of the valley just ahead of Gilberto and Idelina’s ground-floor flat, I became suddenly aware of a sort of flapping sound. I lifted my head towards the direction of the small paddling pool on my left. Oh, I hadn’t realise they had ducks, I mused. My immediate thought was to assume the bird in the pool was some kind of water-abled type. But as I homed in I realised this was just a baby bird trying desperately to stay a-float.

Oh no. I leapt from my seat and dashed toward the pool, just in time to see the poor thing catch it’s neck underneath the fold of the lining giving him no means to breathe. As I neared, I tried to draw him loose but I was sadly too late. He had taken his final gasp and his dead eyes looked straight into mine and I laid him out on the ground in the hope he may dry out and somehow come back to life. 

I am terrible with death. It upsets me so. To see a dead animal of any kind sends a rush of unpleasant feeling through my body together with the urge to cry. I ran to our bedroom to wake up Peter, upset and shocked by what had happened. Luckily for me he is better at handling the unequivocal truth that on the far end of life stands death. He told me this encounter was a reminder to me of how precious life is and how chaotic and inexplicably random it can be.