There’s a dead bird on the mantle tonight, and tomorrow morning we’ll be burying it in the back garden. How it got there, goes like this.

Trevor was out playing in the front when he noticed a small house finch that wasn’t flying off like the others. He called to Teri, and she went out and looked. The bird was a bit small, and was not able to fully fly. It could flap it’s wings, and if put up someplace high, like on the bird feeder, it could fly/crash gently down, but that was about it. We put it in our butterfly cage, and brought it inside. It was getting late, and we have several feral cats around, so leaving it out was a clear death-sentence.

We tried to give it something warm to lay on (an old towel), and feed it some crushed up bird seed, but nothing seemed to help. About a hour later I found it dead.

When Trevor found out, he was very sad. I asked if he want to help me bury it tomorrow morning (something we’ve done before), and said yes. It was then that he suggested the back garden as the burial place, a touching idea as this is a nice place for birds to come to. By then he had tears in his eyes, and even though he was crying, he still was brave enough to make this suggestion.

I love that my son can care for a finch, to the point of tears, even though he’d never seen this particular one until late this afternoon.