Bonding with Nature: Part 7—Fierce Mothers
I was out in the country, visiting a friend’s home in the woods outside of Woodstock, NY. It was night time, and we stepped out on her deck to look at the view. The sky was a beautiful blue-black, and we saw stars and the ground sweeping away down below us into the valley filled with trees and mountains out in the distance. The air was chilly, and we turned to look back at the warm indoors, the lights glowing through the sliding glass doors. Then something moved. We heard a rustling and then saw jerky, erratic, fast dark wings flying hurling at the doors. What was it? A bat? No, a bird. Throwing herself at the door, over and over. Weird, death throe movements. Was she poisoned and having a nervous system meltdown? We huddled as far from the door as possible, not sure what to do. We didn’t want to watch the dark body flinging itself in grotesque contortions at the glass, but it was hard to turn away, and we had to get back in through that door. All the other doors were locked, and no one was inside, and it was cold. Was this a mother trying to protect her young? But where was the nest, and it looked more like she was trying to kill herself, and why wasn’t she flying at us if she was trying to scare us away, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could just tell her to let us go through the door, and we’d leave her alone? She paused in her bombing of the door. We ran to it, opened it slightly, and squeezed through as fast as we could. She didn’t appear again. The next day, my friend found her nest close to the door.
Here’s to fierce mothers who protect their young even at the cost of their own lives in any way that they know how, even if it doesn’t always make sense to those on the outside, and sometimes not even to those on the inside.
I was out in the country, visiting a friend’s home in the woods outside of Woodstock, NY. It was night time, and we stepped out on her deck to look at the view. The sky was a beautiful blue-black, and we saw stars and the ground sweeping away down below us into the valley filled with trees and mountains out in the distance. The air was chilly, and we turned to look back at the warm indoors, the lights glowing through the sliding glass doors. Then something moved. We heard a rustling and then saw jerky, erratic, fast dark wings flying hurling at the doors. What was it? A bat? No, a bird. Throwing herself at the door, over and over. Weird, death throe movements. Was she poisoned and having a nervous system meltdown? We huddled as far from the door as possible, not sure what to do. We didn’t want to watch the dark body flinging itself in grotesque contortions at the glass, but it was hard to turn away, and we had to get back in through that door. All the other doors were locked, and no one was inside, and it was cold. Was this a mother trying to protect her young? But where was the nest, and it looked more like she was trying to kill herself, and why wasn’t she flying at us if she was trying to scare us away, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could just tell her to let us go through the door, and we’d leave her alone? She paused in her bombing of the door. We ran to it, opened it slightly, and squeezed through as fast as we could. She didn’t appear again. The next day, my friend found her nest close to the door.
Here’s to fierce mothers who protect their young even at the cost of their own lives in any way that they know how, even if it doesn’t always make sense to those on the outside, and sometimes not even to those on the inside.
