Dear Lord, I hate fast fluttering things. Butterflies that fly too close, grasshoppers and frogs that jump nearer rather than away, voles that zip round the floor beneath my stool where I am perched at work.
Last Monday it was a chickadee, today a sparrow. Dancing in the feeder just like a plastic ballerina in a golden glassed-in case. It is my fault, the feed ran low and stretching in beneath the glass to reach the seed they lift it, don’t realize they’ve gone too far and end up on the inside looking out. Walking over slowly, murmuring soft and soothing, I lift and set the top back to the sky. "Lift! Lift!" I tell him, "You need altitude," I say. He stops his frenzied useless flight and watches warily as I walk away.
Five minutes later I peek out and he has gone.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology