A bird, whether in the bush or in the hand, has worth beyond my ability to calculate—but I’ve never been good at math.
I took my dog for her afternoon walk when she began to pull insistently at her leash, fixated on something on the other side of the ditch. I stopped and indulged her, assuming there was some particularly fascinating coyote piss she wanted to sniff, but then I saw what she had sensed—a tufted titmouse, suspended upside down in a tangle of burrs.
She was hopelessly trapped. The more she struggled, the more matted her feathers became. I managed to free her from the bush, but she was so enmeshed that she could neither stand up nor turn her head. I brought her home so I could have my hands free to help, and after a while she stopped furiously biting me and allowed me to gently pluck each burrs from her feathers while she worked on another spot.
Once I was done, she seemed to sense her freedom. She screeched at me angrily and took off into the trees in the direction I’d found her.
