When I was 22, I was living in the same street as my University, right behind the library that was next to it. To get to the entrance of the Uni, I needed to cross the park between the two buildings. To enter the library, it was faster to pass right by the wall, on a narrow path that people never used as it was just leading to my house. So it happened, one day, that I started to see dead birds.
Just one at a time, but still, after the third one I started freaking out. (I tried lowering my dosage of drugs, but it didn’t help. Just kidding 🙂 I kept on doing the same amount of drugs. haha 😉 ) Anyway, it started happening in the winter. First with an owl in the snow, then a sparrow, a robbin and then a pidgeon, and so on. The day I saw the pidgeon I was headed to pick up a 6-year-old boy I was supposed to baby-sit.
{{{ It was the first and only time I’d ever babysitted. It’s better for all of us. Turns out I’m rather inappropriate. I basically taught this little boy how to flatten a coin by putting it on the tram rails and waiting for the wheels to come and run over it, and then I made him pose next to dead birds for my own “artistic expression”. I was thinking it is still more real and beneficial than just leaving him in front of the computer – how the day ended eventually, anyway, as I ran out of shit to do with him. Oh, my, God…. “Have you ever thought that we might be the bad guys?” (OITNB S5E13) }}}
So I thought it would be a great educational experience for this child if I showed him reality and explained why it happens and how we could avoid it. To be fair, I wouldn’t have been so inquisitive with the boy if he hadn’t been able to handle it. But he was a smart little rascal, very curious, and he actually understood (in a non-traumatic way) what we were doing and why. I was very careful to keep it light and fun, we didn’t spend much time there, and I answered any question he had in a kind way. I found this moment where youth and life meet death and responsibility very impactful for both of us.
little rascal
I have always been very sensitive about animals and life-forms other than human (see above: treatment of human cubs). I hate the fact that we call ourselves “conscious and rational and intelligent” when our actions within our shared life environment are just disrespectful, egotistic and cruel. We are the worst room-mates for the animals on this planet. These birds died because they flew straight into the glass, as it is reflecting the sky and trees from the park, and they broke their necks thinking they are flying towards a piece of forest. I mean, given that it wasn’t a massacre, just a couple of one-off cases, obviously it is not such a huge issue, it was natural selection getting rid of the silly bird who should have paid more attention. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take more responsibility for what we build and for what we leave in the world. We need to have some compassion for our fellow Earthlings. We are the “conscious ones”, we are responsible for all our acts however small or big.
I know I’m not alone in thinking this, but it seems there’s not enough of us…
Check out this song+video from a few years later:
TheorArts 