What is the Point of a Sparrow

Today I found a wild baby bird underneath my outdoor laundry line. Actually, I didn't find it. My little dog Maya picked it up in her mouth ever so gently and it squeaked , I noticed, and yelled “NO”! And she dropped it. She was so so gentle though, no harm came to the little thing. Ah, it was ever so young. eyes not even open. My husband and I searched in vain for the nest. Alas, none to be found. And so, the inner voices came began debating what to do next.

My immediate thought was “let nature do its thing. I won't interfere.”

My next thought was of my chickens in the yard who would kill it, my cats, the same, my dogs, um well....

So, I picked the wee thing up, and carried it into the house.

I don't know anything about raising wild bird chicks, so I put it in the chicken chick incubator and called friends and posted my dilemma on Facebook. I followed up on one offering of a wildlife rehabilitator. She wanted to meet immediately (damn, there goes the dinner plans) and so we did.

We hear all the time, literally ALL the time, of horrendous individuals doing unimaginable cruelty to other humans, animals, the planet. Tonight I met someone really excited and happy that I had called her to save a sparrow.

As I was thanking her for taking this little bird off my hands, she was thanking me for calling her to do so.

It struck me as I was driving home from my meeting place with her. What sort of a person spends her life saving sparrows?

The answer is-a very good, kind one. Sparrows are not endangered. They are not pretty, really. They are not “necessary, ” to the environment, or anything else, that I know of. Yet Robin, clearly loves them and saves them and spends immense time and money to do so. Indeed she would for any animal, sparrow or other beastie brought to her.

So, why save a sparrow?

Because you can. Because that little thing is a little living conscious soul. Because doing so validates its being as well as your own. Because it lives and I live and we have that, at least, one thing in common. Because it, blindly, desperately thrust up its open beak begging, desperate, to be fed... to live. Because it lives and so do I and so does Robin.