Nature Done Wright

    I begin this post with two warnings.
    1.  This item is not for the squeamish.
    2. It’s best to look where you are walking when navigating around the Celery Farm.
    On Saturday, my wife and I were walking along the seldom-traveled Phair’s Pond path when…

    Click "Continue reading" for the rest of this strange and somewhat disturbing tale.
   

… she let out an anguished gasp.
    There in front of her on the path was a fragile baby robin, next to its broken blue egg. The tiny bug-eyed bird’s mouth was gaping open, clearly in distress.
   This was clearly the Humpty-Dumpty of robin eggs. The hatchling was too young to survive on its own, and we could not put the egg back together again.
    So we proceeded to do what we always do in these circumstances: We phoned the marsh warden.
   He said told me there were two options.
   If we could locate the nest, we should try to put the baby back in it, though he said he suspected that a crow had raided a nest and dropped the egg as it was flying away, so the nest could be anywhere.
   The second option was awful: To end the nestling’s suffering, I had to be cruel to be kind. I had to step on the nestling and crush it.
   I felt sick as Patty and I walked back toward the nestling. I didn’t know what to do. I knew there was no nearby nest, and I knew she would be upset if I had to kill the little robin, even though it was the humane thing to do.
   Then, for only the second or third time I can recall, we encountered someone walking counter-clockwise around Phair’s Pond, sauntering along as happy as a wren.
    After the walker passed us, my wife  cringed and said: What if the walker had inadvertently stepped on the tiny bird?
   When we got to the spot, there was the baby robin, squished to death.
   What a turn of events, all within a minute or two.
  A woman I had never met had saved me from a duty I was dreading, and had taken the nestling out of its misery without knowing it.
  Another day at the Celery Farm.