Some Will Be Better Than Others

I am positively dying to get back to working on my blog everyday.

Lately it nags at me in the back of my mind all of the time. I feel like this is God’s appointed work for me. Write. I used to work on it constantly, any time I had a spare moment. Then life happened to me.

I wonder if I can get back to that dedication.

It won’t be perfect or even always pretty, but this is my attempt at day one. Day one of my mission: Get back to writing.

Some posts will be better than others. This one may be the most boring one I ever write, and for that I am genuinely sorry!

I have so many different ideas in my head I have trouble settling on one.

So to get back into the groove, I’ll start with today’s most unusual story. This afternoon we ended up trying to save a mourning dove.

…because you know…being the bird experts that we are…

I was sitting inside on my couch doing nothing at all, when JD barged in the front door.

JD said he and his buddy (we’ll call hime Bruce for this tale) found a bird in the street with a wing so badly injured it couldn’t fly.

I’m a terrible person, so I was skeptical. “Is it one of those aggravating mocking birds, because if so, it probably ticked off a crow. Those are mean little buggars. Is it gray and white?? I don’t like those things.”

(Look, I still have hard feelings from the time a mocking bird attacked me on a walk in 2008.)

“No, Mom, it’s a mourning dove.”

Aw!

Caleb and I headed outside to investigate. JD’s buddy was standing by the bird across the street, where he’d helped the dove get out of the road. The dove was now safely resting in the shade of a large bush.

It is a beautiful, calm, sweet, probably female, mourning dove.

I was impressed they knew that. The boys explained that Bruce’s mom had identified the bird species for them from the photo.

It took us a few minutes to look at the dove (without touching it) and think through what must have happened here. There was no blood, no claw marks, and no predator that we could see lurking nearby. One wing had the bird skin exposed in a straight line with all the feathers gone from that wide line.

You can’t see the injury in the photo. It was on the other side.

The more we thought about it, the more we were sure it must have been hit by a car.

Surely a predator would have finished the job. Plus, this is an adult bird, not a fledgling learning to fly. This dove is probably a mother already.

She was fairly calm but had no trouble walking when we made her nervous. She was so quiet and composed. I felt like JD and Bruce had already basically earned her trust.

Bruce came up with an expert little method of using two tennis racquets to build walls around the bird without touching her to guide here where she needed to go. We used this to coax her into a shoe box that Caleb brought out.

Eventually, through internet research, I found a number to call for Virginia Wildlife Rescue. They called me back and referred us to a specific 24 hour local vet clinic. They triage the bird there to see if it can be rehabilitated.

Caleb drove our sweet little birdie down to the clinic, with me riding in the passenger seat with the dove in a shoebox on my lap. He took her in and filled out all the papers. They have our phone number and address, but we didn’t have to pay anything since the bird is wildlife.

Caleb said they were all very kind to him and made sure he knew that we may never see our neighborhood mourning dove again.

The best case scenario is she makes a full recovery and could be released back to our street. The worst case scenario, of course, is the opposite, she doesn’t survive.

And just like in all of life, we hope for the absolute best for our dove.

As I write this, it reminds me of the Bible story I read to the 1st-4th graders at church this morning.

“Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? (Matthew 6:25-27).”

God cares about the birds, and God cares about us. We don’t need to worry so much. If we do what we’re supposed to do, that’s all we can do. The rest is in God’s hands. There is so much comfort in that.

And even if we mess up, or we accidentally fly into a car, God is still right here, and He can always be there for us if we ask him to.

A good writer would end it here, but I also have to add one more thought.

This whole dove incident made me think about my dad too. He was the absolute GOAT at doing mourning dove calls. I could never do it, but he was so good at it. I miss him, and I enjoy these reminders of him. It’s like a hug from the past.

Thanks for reading my blog, even after I ghosted for so long! Again, some will be better than others, and that’s okay. My plan is to alternate between story telling posts and Pinterest-style-helpful content like I’ve made the past six years. Those pay the bills, but the stories are so much easier and more fun.