I saw a bird the other day...

... with a broken wing in the middle of the road in front of Banana's. It was still alive and must have gotten hit by some errant car. It seemed to be trying very hard to "crawl" out of the road dragging its one broken wing whilst weakly flapping the good wing. I didn't see it til I had almost driven right past it. I looked in my rear view mirror and there were 4 more cars behind mine, one of which was a reggae bus. Fear gripped me and I knew that there was only the slightest chance that the bird could survive that many cars... I kept driving, and yet all the while I kept thinking about the bird and what could have happened to it and wondering if I should turn around and try somehow to save it. Maybe the VTH (Veterinary Teaching Hospital) would take it in. I could call my roommate and see if the VTH could even do anything about it. I turned my car around...

The entire way back, I kept saying, "please don't be dead.. please don't be dead.. please don't be dead"...

I drove past Banana's... all that was left was a flattened feathered remnant with a single down feather still twitching in the breeze. I don't know why.. but I felt a great sadness.. Sure it was only a bird.. but it hadn't seemed like some backwater scavenger bird.. it had been pretty and something about its feeble attempts at escaping from certain death had struck me in a way I couldn't ignore. I thought about that bird the entire way home...