R.I.P.

Two days back, papa and Ethan returned home with a baby bird. They were near the mini-mart when they heard frenetic chirping. They found the baby bird near a bush and a cat was ready to pounce on it. It must have fallen from a nest. It looked like it had a broken wing. So papa and the 2 boys made the bird comfortable in a big container and tried to feed it (using tweezers and syringe from the boys' science kit) but the bird only had 2 bites and promptly fell asleep tucking its head under its wings. I thought the bird was traumatized first by the fall, followed by the incessant excited "chirping" of the little humans. The next morning I was instructed to feed the bird since I was the only one free right? But when I returned home from school, I discovered the bird in a belly up position, MUCH to my horror of course! I prodded it gently but it didn't move. Sigh. It had to die on me. The boys were not too devastated (yet) when told of its death. They wanted to bury the bird. (HDB my boys, we don't have a yard like in the stories?) We waited for papa to return home. Papa wrote RIP on a piece of paper and put it into the container, covered it and threw it into the dustbin. Ethan thought at least we could spell it out in full, lol. Anyway, it was at night when we said a prayer for the bird that the floodgates (Ethan's) opened. It's just a bird, but I couldn't possibly say that. Ethan found the baby bird so he was the most affected. But he was ok when I promised to print out a photo of it for his album.

From the short episode, we learnt that papa once found and kept a mynah when he was a boy. We also debated on whether the bird could learn to fly on its own. (Papa said no because his mynah never learnt to fly, only hopped about, and it fell to its death from the window, gruesome). I thought birds are wired to fly right? Papa said the mother bird must teach it to fly. But we ALL agreed on one thing: baby bird misses its mother. Sob, Sob..