Hummingbird Healing

Last night, I walked outside as dusk fell and noticed a lime green-colored hummingbird splayed on the deck. She probably flew into the window. I knelt down and inspected her. She was alive, apparently stunned, barely breathing. I took her inside to the kitchen and wondered what to do. I felt desperate. No time to Google. I am sick of Googling and later seeing ads connected to my searches. So I called a friend to Google for answers but she didn’t answer.

The bird rested on the cutting board. I went to work and improvised it without Google. I put some cotton balls in a small bowl, nestled the bird in the cotton, sliced up a pear for nectar (??), placed a thin wedge near the bird’s beak, draped a dish towel over three quarters of the bowl, took a picture of my patient (whose coloring had now dramatically changed), turned off the lights, left the kitchen, sat on a chair, and waited. The living room soon became dark and I sat alone in the dark missing my husky and wanting that bird to live with such fervor that it brought me to tears.

An hour later, I got up to check on the bird. I turned on the lights, rolled back the towel, and the bird flew up into the kitchen and over to my adjacent writing studio, where it perched on a piece of driftwood!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I walked over, gathered the bird up in the towel, walked outside, opened the towel, and the bird fluttered away into the night, right to the rhododendron bush in the back yard.

I fell asleep an hour later, happier than I had been in months.

This morning, I saw the bird outside the window. I’ll rig up a hummingbird feeder soon.

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