28 Mar Helping Where We Can
The man seated beside me on the plane noticed my curious glances at the opened black pouch resting on his tray table.
Once the pilot had announced that the plane had reached 10,000 feet, the man had retrieved the pouch from his backpack and carefully unzipped it to reveal its contents. He removed items one by one: a travel bottle of hand sanitizer, antibacterial wet wipes, pointy tweezers, tiny scissors and a Ziploc bag that looked like it contained brown rice or wheat. He examined the items as if ensuring everything was there.
My sidelong, curious looks must not have been as discreet as I thought, because he leaned slightly toward me and said with a smile, “It’s a pigeon de-stringing kit.”
He asked if I had ever seen a stringfoot pigeon—one whose feet were entangled with plastic, thread, hair, string or other debris. Over time, he explained, the bird’s feet become bound together, and the bird is barely able to walk. The man scrolled through pictures on his phone, showing me heartbreaking images of string woven in complex layers, cutting deeply into birds’ feet.
“There’s no way they can remove it themselves,” he said, shaking his head. “They have to have someone help them.”
The man is part of a club that goes around spotting and aiding these stringfoot pigeons. He told me it involves carefully catching the bird, patiently and gently removing all of the material tangled in its feet, and then releasing the bird back to where it was caught, hopefully in sight of its flock. He brings his kit when he is traveling around, ready to intervene when necessary.
“But…there are so many…” the woman seated by the window chimed in. I thought she was completely engrossed in her book, but she, too, was interested in this stringfoot pigeon discussion.
The conversation in our row faded into the background as the flight progressed. The man stowed away his supplies and settled in to watch a movie on his phone, I did some work on my laptop, and the woman next to the window resumed her reading.
While I worked, my thoughts lingered on this man who spends his free time destringing pigeons. It reminded me of a tale I had once heard—a story of a sparrow and a horse.
A horse is trotting down a path when it comes upon a sparrow. The sparrow is lying on its back with its feet straight up in the air and its eyes squinched tightly together.
The horse, looking down at this small upside-down sparrow, asks what in the world it is doing.
“I’m trying to hold back the darkness,” the sparrow confidently declares.
The horse roars with laughter. “Are you serious? That’s so ridiculous. What do you weigh, not even an ounce?”
The sparrow replies with a tiny shrug, “One does what one can.”
As I walked off of the plane behind the man carrying a pigeon destringing kit in his backpack, I thought of the ways that we do what we can.
We find small, essential ways to make ourselves useful.
We help hold back the darkness.
We free tiny feet.