Dead Hummingbird

This afternoon coworker Binh returned from her break and came over to tell me about a dead hummingbird she'd come across. She knew about my interest in hummingbirds and figured I'd want to check it out. It was just lying in the middle of the sidewalk, as if it had just fallen there, she said.

I half-walked, half-ran to the location, anxious to get there before it was carried off by some cat or dog, or worse, stepped on by an inattentive -- or malicious -- human. And to my relief, as I approached the spot I could see it from across the broad, four-lanes-plus-one road, just a tiny dark speck on the sunlit pavement.

It was lying there with its partly-open wings catching the breeze and causing the little body to roll from side to side repeatedly. I took the shots below, then I wrapped it up in some tissue and brought it back to the office. I placed it in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator in the staff lounge (no worries -- this was done only after it was securely wrapped up, taped closed and rolled up in a small tote bag). After work I brought it home and it's now in my refrigerator, to stay there frozen solid, until I figure out what to do with it.



Actually, this is the third dead bird I've brought home. The first was a pigeon I found at USC when I was a student there. It had flown into a glass door and probably broken its neck. I brought it home, cut off the wings, drained and dried them. They were very interesting and mysterious, looking rather like tools of magic from a shaman's kit. Later I traded one wing for a rabbit skin, which I still have.

The second one was also at USC, but it was one of my professors who found it and informed me of it. And I brought that one home, too, and placed it in the refrigerator and sort of forgot about it, until my mother came visiting one day, and as mothers will, decided to clean her son's dust-laden atelier for him. You can guess what happened -- she got a nice little shock when she happened across the little frozen mummy I'd forgotten about. I don't know what I did with that one. Which probably means I disposed of it after the incident.

Below is what I tried to do for the hummingbird's spirit -- help him on his journey to his destination, wherever that may be, by slightly manipulating one of the photos so that it shows him flying on.

EDIT: It occurs to me that this may be the very bird I saw so often in the tree that I came to think of as the 'hummmingbird tree' over the last few years. If that's the case, my hummingbird photos will most likely have come to the end of the series.

EDIT: I have since learned that hummingbirds are protected by law and one cannot keep them, not even dead ones. I guess I could put it back right where I found it, so nature can take its course (although, most likely something 'unnatural' will happen to it there -- like the gardener chucking it in the trash along with mowed grass...).