Lexi, The (Baby) Bird Killer

Every year, in the spring, as with the swallows return to Capistrano, the robins build a nest in a small hideaway above our back deck. It is always constructed in the same place, directly above the north post, insulated on the sides by sturdy 2X8s and over the top by a slanting, shingled roof. We—the boys, Donna, I—watch the nest come together, the eggs laid, the baby birds nourished by Moma and Papa Robin, through our kitchen window. It is one of those rare sweet things that we, the parents, can get excited about and our boys don't give us a look suggesting that if we think it's cool, it can't be that cool.

What was different this spring—different from the previous five, since our last dog died—was that we had a dog again. A dog whose home is our backyard (where there are fewer socks for her to eat). A backyard previously safe for young birds just born, assuming our neighbors' cats hadn't jumped the fence for a visit, which they used to do from time to time, though, to my knowledge, not since we got a dog.

Perhaps you can see where this is going.

For the last week or two we saw the little beaks popping up above the rim of the nest as Mom flew in worms to feed her young, while Dad, from the maple tree, looked on and chirped, his emotions mixed, thinking, no doubt, that life as he knew it was over; meantime Lexi, the dog who up until now hadn't seemed terribly interested in squirrels dashing along the top of the fence, jumping from limb to limb in the trees, who, we sometimes joked, resembled more a stuffed animal from a fair than a predator, lay off in the grass, indifferent to it all. Even as Mama and Papa Robin occasionally ate from her food.

Before long we could see the birds' heads. Pretty soon they were standing in their nest, wing to wing, as it were. It was getting crowded in there, and yesterday the first baby bird leapt from the nest.

Zachary came into the house distressed, cupping the bird in his hands, having apparently taken the small creature from the mouth of Lexi. The bird was still alive, though exhibiting clear signs of PTSD, trauma we could only imagine. What were we going to do? the boys wondered. Could we keep the bird, build him a cage, hutch him like a rabbit? What if we at least got him out of the backyard, away from Lexi's mostly good-natured teeth, to a safe place, a hideout—one where (I felt guilty, picturing) the neighbor cats could have fun with him.

I quickly discovered that trying to explain Darwinian principles to children isn't any easier than trying to explain them to thirty percent or more of the adult population of this country. I suppose it's understandable. How are you supposed to maintain a cheerful, optimistic outlook in a world like that?

"I think we need to hand this one over to God," I finally said, nearly adding, inanely, "It is what it is."

The boys, wary of such abstractions, as if in possession of a preternatural understanding that the handing of this particular problem over to God wouldn't be any wiser than, say, handing over one's backed up sewer to Him, appeared terrified, not to mention disappointed—crestfallen—in our, their parents, inability to rise to the occasion and prevent this beautiful thing we had been witnessing for weeks now—the cycle of life—from ending in tragedy.

Instead, I took the boys with me to karate, and corraled Lexi on the deck, in theory giving the youthful birds a good two hours to parachute to the grass, to learn to fly in idyllic circumstances, without being harrassed by a dog who was just learning how much fun it could be to get in touch with her animal instincts. If the birds jumped out of the front of the nest rather than the back, and landed on the deck, well, there was only so much God could do. As to the traumatized, though still alive, bird—the boys had named him Kevin—he was carefully placed in thick ground-cover at the corner of the yard, where, for all I knew, a giant snake was waiting, but at least he'd be out of view of the hawks, and not agitate our dog, locked on the deck on a day when the temperature was closing in on one hundred degrees—a covered deck, admittedly, though not as cool and comfortable as, for instance, the shaded ground-cover where I'd placed the bird.

We came home to find Kevin—we guessed it was Kevin—dead at the opposite end of the yard, another bird in the process of being harrassed to death by Lexi, who had figured a way while we were gone to open the deck gate. There was one bird left in the nest, gazing heavenward, its beak open as if trying to draw limited oxygen, perhaps due to an anxiety attack. The fourth bird was MIA. We hoped—and are still hoping—that he was the clever, resourceful, lucky type. If so, his parents had chosen nonetheless to dwell on the fates of the other three, chirping, hopping from branch to branch, occasionally flying menacingly over the head of Lexi, who remained obdurate in the attention she was giving the baby bird on the ground, the bird terrified, squealing, looking up in the trees: "Mother, Father ... why??"

I was able to stealthfully scoop up poor Kevin and drop him into the compost bin before the boys found him. The second bird, at last harrassed to death despite our stern admonishings to the dog to stand down, was picked up by Zachary and brought into the house in the hope that Donna, a nurse, after all, could help him, but the free sway of his limp neck suggested otherwise.

The boys were insistent that we give him a decent burial, not toss him into the compost as I had suggested. "Would you do that to me," Zach remarked indignantly, "if I died? Throw me into the compost—"

Ian dug a hole in the dirt by the fence with the spade (Donna wondering: "What if he hits something—cables, a gas line—"). All the neighbor kids showed up for the service. I waited for Ian (surely it would be Ian) to start in with the invocation, picturing for some warped, godforsaken, terrible parent sort of reason the preacher from "Blazing Saddles"... Oh Lord, deliver onto Heaven this our cherished bird, whose life was brief, Hobbesian, really, in its final particulars ... 

I took the previously kind and decent dog for a long walk then, bumping into Andre, our neighbor, on the way. He said the cats had dispatched their birds, who also built in the same spot every year, so precise were their instincts. He tried putting a couple back into the safety of their nests, but they kept jumping back out. There were feathers all over the yard. Cats. What is one to do?

I stopped downtown for a beer, giving the bird who was still in the nest time, the one who was missing but not yet confirmed dead a chance. Or so I hoped. I didn't get home with Lexi until after dark. Mama and Papa Robin were once again chirping like mad. Back in her yard again, Lexi was rooting around in the spot where I'd earlier hid one of the birds. I told her to get away. She did, then went back. I finally went inside.

This morning, heading outside with my coffee, I saw another dead bird, on the brick padding not far from where Lexi had been rooting the night before. Mama and Papa Robin were still making noise though not as much. A kind of resignation, I suppose. I put the dead bird in the compost before the kids woke. I expected they would have a lot of questions when they woke up, but they didn't. "You're a bird murderer!" Zachary remarked, letting the dog inside and playing with her. Dogs will be dogs. What were we doing today? he wanted to know.