My Little Heartbreaker

JACK

I wish I could remember all of the things he's said over the past several days that have made me laugh or made him look at him like he was out of his mind. He's always had such a knack for thinking way above or outside of his age. Cheese tasting, anyone? ;)

A few of those comments have become status updates on my Facebook, but I just wish I wasn't so scatterbrained half the time and could remember all these little gems. For example, he wants a Facebook. Or a MySpace. I've told him MySpace is completely out of the question but he can have a Facebook when he gets older if he wants. He's desperate to know when that will be, I have to stall him on that because I'm not sure if there's an actual right age to give him for an answer.

There was an incident yesterday afternoon though that reminded me just how sensitive Jack is though. He's pretty much a big talker, very expressive, kind of has a larger than life personality but at the same time he can be surprisingly fragile. Hmmm, who does he sound like now that I think about it? ;) Anyway, after school yesterday Jack and the little girl from a couple doors down found a baby bird in a tree all alone. I'm not sure of all the details on why they did what they did, but you just have to think of how their hearts were in the right place. Somehow they had concluded that this bird's mother had left it. One of them had a little washcloth and picked up the bird, and apparently one of them had a branch too that the bird spent some time on over the course of the afternoon. Granted, I did not see this entire episode, only part of it and what Jack told me about. It's probably best that I didn't see. So they spent a good part of their afternoon walking around looking for a bird that looked like the one they had found because that would surely be its mother. In fact, as we were driving to pick up Seth later in the afternoon and he was telling me this story, he saw a bird out the window and said, "Look that's it, that's its mother!" Well, I guess, but we were about a mile away from our neighborhood.

I felt so bad because I knew I probably should tell him what probably would happen or had happened. I didn't want to tell him that because they'd touched the bird the mother probably wouldn't come back because of the human smell. My neighbor also noticed that one of its wings seemed like it might be broken and in that case the mother might not come back either. I'm sure these things would sound so cruel to a little 8 year old boy and I didn't want to crush his hopes that he'd been doing a good thing. But how could I not? I mean, what if he comes home this afternoon and it's still there, or if it's dead? I'm really hoping it's gone so he can at least hope the mother came back. But last night as I was slicing up strawberries he came in with this cloth in his hand and said,"Look what I caught!" and he showed me this tiny little baby bird. O.K., first it startled the heck out of me. But I told him how cute it was and he went back outside. I knew though that I had to say something to him.

So I explained to him how if a mother bird smells human on her baby or nest that it could scare her even if the human was only trying to help and then she might not come back. I didn't go into the broken wing/abandonment thing with him. He seemed to understand what I was saying and I told him the best thing to do would be to put the bird back in a tree and just pray for it. His bottom lip started to tremble and I hugged him. It was about that time that I needed to leave to pick up Brent from practice and Jack asked to go with me. The whole way he talked about the bird and how sweet it was and how cute it was and how they really only wanted to help it. Then he was quiet for a little while. I looked over and he had a few tears running down his cheeks. I asked him what was wrong and he pointed to the sky and said, "the bird". There really wasn't anything else I could say so I just held his little hand and told him to pray for the baby bird.

I'm sure he's probably learned something from this which is good and sad at the same time. You don't want somebody to lose the pure intention to help someone or something else. But at the same time I don't want his head to be buried in the sand. And I did talk to him about wild animals and how they could bite because they were scared even if all you were trying to do was help.

It was just a reminder that even my big bulldog of a boy has a soft little heart!

Comments

[MOM]

Some of life's lessons can really pull on your heart strings. It's hard to see them learn them, but you know it's important that it happens and it makes them stronger.
Makes you love them even more.

XOXO

[Kay-Kay]

He is just so precious. I love that he's a tough guy with a tender heart.

[Stephanie_M]

How pitiful...I feel so bad for him. :(

The human scent thing...isn't entirely true though. So he didn't doom the bird to be abandoned by it's mother (of course if it had a broken wing...that's a different thing). Of course, it's best not to touch the baby bird anyway...for reasons similar to why you don't want to touch other wild animals.

I verified this with Mark, who is Mr. Nature. Is that a reliable source?