Too far gone for warmth

It was cold. It had rained. It would rain again. The clouds were at head height. And there was a bird on the path, a tiny bird, a wax-eye. It was puffed up against the winter. But it seemed odd that it was out in the open, on the ground.

Feisty creatures, wax-eyes. When I put food out these frozen mornings they are watching. I can sense them darting in the bushes. The bravest will raid the table while I’m there. If I stand still with bread in my hand they’ll even perch on it to feed. It feels like an honour. It’s no honour. It’s desperation. It’s the triumph of hunger over fear. Winter’s no time to be a bird.

At the table wax-eyes spend more time fighting than eating. They puff themselves up to seem larger than their tiny frames, and they flutter their wings like bees, and they make attacks on each other and leap into the air and down again. There is food for all, and they would do better to co-operate, but it’s life and death out there, and they are hard-wired to fight.

They remind me of a young man I used to play alongside in second grade club rugby. Off the field he was affable. On the field he was a maniac. Five minutes into a game and at some perceived offence he’d swing a fist. He wasn’t the largest guy. Sometimes he got beaten up, sometimes sent off. Once, memorably, and in that order, both. He just couldn’t help himself. He

Iworked for Inland Revenue.

The bird on the path wasn’t fighting. It just stood on the cold wet concrete. As I came near it did not react. I bent over it. I could see no injury. Perhaps it had flown into a window. Birds often do at my place. Some stun themselves but recover. Others die.

I wrapped my hands loosely around the bird. I felt it quiver then be still. I thought perhaps if I could warm it up a bit. n the living room the log burner has been running for two months. Fire is the consolatory joy of winter. I cranked it to high, and sat on the sofa, the bird in my hands, the hands on my lap. No movement.

I took one hand away. The bird just sat. I could study in detail its details: the tiny beak, the olive-green body, the rose-blushed flanks, the fuse wire feet and the bright white ring around the beaded eye. An exquisite miniature self, but somehow damaged. I ran a finger down its back. Nothing.

I turned on the television. A panel of grown men with funeral faces. They were lamenting the All Blacks. Defeat was unacceptable, said one, and heads nodded.

The bird was aligned to the television, its two black eyes seeming to watch. It seemed a bird in suspension. I was not sure what to do. It was breathing, but I did not think it would recover. I could have wrung its neck between two fingers. But I also couldn’t. Where there’s life ...

I took it back outside and placed it under a bush, a dryish spot, out of the wind, and left it there to take its chances in the world.

Overnight it rained. In the morning the bird was where I’d left it but was hard to make out. On its side, dead, the colours all gone, the feathers sleek with wet, the frame shrunk to something pitiful, it was close to being soil already. I fetched a spade and buried it and went on my way in the winter.