An improvement on Anderson Cooper: Lary Bloom's conversation partner.
“There is no need to fly away when I come out here to read my book, Ms. Robin. I won’t hurt you or your babies in the nest. I just want to talk, and, perhaps, to draw strength from your instincts.”
The mother robin seems wary at first. Yet, she is apparently of two minds. She “peeks” and “tuts,” aware that a human can be a threat.
But she is also trusting enough to have built her nest in the asparagus fern just three feet from the front door knob, the second such mom to choose that spot this year for starting a family.
As she tempts me to chase after her when she leaves the nest and waddles on the lawn, I am reminded of my summer long ago as a tour guide in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
There, I told tourists that mother ducks do the same thing — fly from their little ones, feigning injury so they will look vulnerable to predators and leave her ducklings alone.
I say to Mother Robin, “You did some hopping in the front yard, and I saw the worm in your mouth, the one you then divvied up for your hatchlings.”
I have wanted to know why, of all the places in East Rock including the nearby public park, the robin has chosen this spot to build her nest, within easy chirping distance of the living room, and the rat-a-tat-tat of terrible news on CNN.
To be sure, the National Audubon Society points out that this species, also referred to formally in Latin as Turdus Migratorius, is no stranger to windowsills. But asparagus ferns?
Is it something cozy about this houseplant? Or is some kind of witchcraft afoot? Are we missing a sign about this gift of nature that ought to lift us out of our communal mental malaise?
Yet I know that robins, since ancient times, have been considered positive omens. Native tribes have considered their presence a sign of coming peace, and their red breasts are symbols for “can-do” creatures. Their songs inspire essays and odes. My wife, Suzanne, sings a robin song her father taught her:
Robin in the rain, such a saucy fellow,
Robin in the rain, mind your socks of yellow…
Is this robin, then, trying to cheer me up? Does she see that I am sitting here with my Kindle reading for the first time in many decades George Orwell’s 1984 and nearly croaking at how relevant it is today.
“Indeed, Ms. Robin, you may not be aware, given your primary duties, that authoritarianism growing all around us. And that as in Orwell’s novel, ignorance is rewarded, lies are truth, war is peace, anti-administration treatises are treasonous, and disappearances in the night plentiful. There is only one way to think, the way the new Big Brother does. If not, ‘evil’ is attached to your name.
“In the novel, Big Brother requires all to participate in daily ritual of 2 Minutes of Hate. In our lives today, hate is a 24-hour practice. And even I am caught up in it. I despise the man who produces it, thrives on it, and I rue that I have been affected so. It is not healthy.
“Still, in all of this, Madam Robin, there must be a reason for your presence here now. I should add that I’m still stunned by your predecessor a few weeks ago in this asparagus fern. She of course looked just like you with that bulging post-partum red breast.
“I’m looking at your babies now, with their beaks open, little beggars with their eyes glued shut, and entirely dependent on you for survival. I remember the previous ones in the spring, and how quickly they grew, and how, finally, the most adventurous of them ignored its siblings and lifted itself from the nest.
“It managed to fly a yard or two before tumbling to the porch floor. Then it tried again a minute later, off on is path of becoming self-sufficient. That little one was, I believe, our harbinger. Our champion.”
To all this the robin does not reply, until, after she returns with a fine worm to spread around, she says, “Cheery-up, Cheery-ee.” It’s quite enough for me.
If ever we needed the promise of robins, it is now. So, I will sit here on the porch reading, waiting for the next little bunch to fly off the homemade aircraft carrier, and help defeat the enemy within.
