Dashed Hopes

I considered not writing about this. People like cheerful reports about how nature sorts everything out. They like to think that every sparrow is looked after and that no life is lost in vain. But here in my untended plot of land, unexpected, premature and even senseless death is a normal part of life, and I think that even Bow knows about it. Remember what he said about Niles the kitten?

http://notesfromthepens.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-way-of-all-things.html

Last year I was able to follow developments in three different robins' nests. This year I was surprised at first that I was not seeing any, when I finally noticed one by the fence-line, snug in a low lying cypress bush.

I spotted the firs robin's nest on April 13, 201 

There were already three perfect little blue eggs in the nest. It was very far from the house, and so there was no way I could keep watch over it as I had the nest in the rosebush in front of my front door last year.  But I was looking forward to seeing the three eggs hatch.

I spotted the second robin's nest in a rosebush facing the public road. The mother robin scolded me and tried to lure me away from her nest. There were three blue eggs, streaked with a little bit of white snug in the nest.

I spotted the second robin's nest on April 18, 2017

The third nest I spotted this season wasn't even a robin's. It belonged to a mourning dove who flew away noisily every time I approached. It was April 19, the anniversary of the Mt. Carmel Massacre, and I was preoccupied, but not so much so that I did not wonder about it.

I did not know what kind of egg it was until a friend of a friend on Facebook identified it for me. I was really looking forward to seeing how a mourning doves differ from robins in their development.

By April 23, I noticed that two of the eggs in the first robin's nest had hatched.

By the 24th of April, I spotted a second egg in the mourning dove nest. The lighting was such that one of the eggs seemed pinkish, while the other looked bluish. This sparked a discussion among my friends as to whether one of the eggs did not belong in the egg. Could that bluish egg be a starlings?

By the end of that day, the first egg in the mourning dove nest had already hatched, and the other egg went from looking blue to being white again. It had probably been just a trick of the light and both eggs were "legitimate."

The mourning dove hatchling seemed healthy, and I was hopeful that eventually the other egg would hatch, revealing a matching sibling.

At the time when the mourning dove baby hatched, the baby robins in the first robin's nest looked like this.

Then the next day, April 25, the first egg in the second robin's nest by the road hatched.

That was the best it ever got. At that point, for all three nests, there were four hatchlings and four unhatched eggs. But the weather started to change, and it began to rain every day almost all day long. The nest time I went to check all three nests, the second robin's nest was empty. Completely empty.

.There was no sign of a struggle. Not a feather or a cracked egg. But I knew it was too early for anything but a bad ending to explain the total absence of hatchlings and eggs. On that day, the first robin's nest still contained two babies and the third egg had not hatched.

In the mourning dove nest, there was still one hatchling and one egg.

The next day, when I could get away to look, the mourning dove nest was completely bare, all except for one stray white feather.

In the first robin's nest, the two babies looked like this that day.

It continued to rain and rain and rain. Major parts of our state became flooded. Roads were closed and bridges crumbled and teenagers were swept away to their deaths in their cars. On April 29 I ventured out in the rain and the thunder to look at the surviving robins in the nest. They seemed to be doing well, despite it all.

Yesterday, May 1st, which was an unusually cold day, when I ventured forth to check on the robins, all I found was a bare, clean, empty  nest.

Of eight potential new lives, all were snuffed out. 

Intimations of Mortality

Our dog Teyman died on June 24, 2013. She had been struggling with recurring growths for some time, and she was twelve years old, so her death was not unexpected, but it was still a sad thing for all of us.

Teyman arrived on our property as a stray on October 3rd, 2001. We had just moved in, and it was the anniversary of my father's death, so it seemed like some kind of omen.

Teyman and Sword on the day they met

Over the years, we have come to take Teyman's presence for granted. She was a very independent dog, and she loved to go hunting for her own food.

Bow and Teyman had an uneasy but respectful relationship. Teyman stood her ground with Bow and did not allow him to dominate her.

Life with Teyman was not always easy, because she had a mind of her own and would not always do what someone else wanted. However, when a friend was in trouble and needed to be taken to the emergency room in the middle of the night, it was Teyman who woke me up and insisted that I do something about it right away.

For most of her life, Teyman was a lean and slick looking dog, and she was spry and active. Only during the past few years did she gain weight and become less active. As she aged, she became less tolerant of other dogs, so I had to separate her from Brownie and our new dog Leo. Because she was no longer in the backyard, I took Teyman on walks three times a day for the past year and a half. This was good for both of us.

When Teyman died, Bow was sad. He didn't say he was sad, though. He tried to comfort us by saying it "just happened for no reason" -- זה סתם קרה -- meaning that it was not anyone's fault. And then he said he was not happy. But he didn't say he was sad.

However, he looked sad for the next few days.

Now, he no longer looks sad -- just a little thoughtful. Death is never easy to grasp and understand, even when we do accept it.

When someone we know dies, it reminds us of our own mortality. Sometimes we just need to process for a while. It's not a question of replacing Teyman with another dog. We have two other dogs, and Bow likes them. But sometimes he just wants to ignore Leo and Brownie and just swing and swing and think his own thoughts.