So fast, so fragile

Warning -- if you are at all squeamish about animals, do not read on!

We lost a finch the other day. Like all stories in this house, it's not a simple one, and requires telling -- maybe just because I need to tell it.

On Thursday, I was changing the water in the aviary, when a blur went past my head. Now, to put this in perspective, our aviary is quite large -- over two metres tall in parts, three metres long and a metre deep. I've never kept birds before and don't really like the idea of it, but at least they can fly about in this. We had no intention of getting birds in the first place, but caught a couple of canaries soon after we moved into the house, and have gone on from there. Last year, we lost half our thirteen canaries, when The Gadget Man accidentally left the cage door open. I managed to recapture one who was trying to return by opening the door for it, and it went very happily in.

At the end of last year, we bought four finches to keep the canaries company. We now have about 40 (and are back up to 11 canaries); the finches fly in a flock. They sit in the vines at the top of the cage, whereas the canaries have colonised the middle of the cage, and fly about as individuals. The finches roll the canary eggs out of their nests. And pecked a mouse to death -- or so my children said. So, to lose a finch was not that heartbreaking a deal, especially when considering how to handle the population explosion. So, yes, it wasn't a big deal except that for two days she tried to get back into the cage. She tried desperately.

Because she was so desperate, I tried to recapture her and let her back in, but our finches are a lot wilder than the canaries. I can go up to the canaries in the cage and talk to them; if I get too close they may or may not fly off. But the finches panic every time I go near them. (As does the one lone quail at the bottom of the cage, but he's getting better gradually.)

As we were having dinner on Friday night, out on the deck, we saw why the finch was so desperate: she was a baby, and her parents were feeding her through the wire of the cage. So Gadget Man, being inventive and practical, rigged up a trap: he took our old, small birdcage and lifted the top off on one side, so it seemed hinged, propped it open, put some seed in the bottom, and rigged up a great long string so that we could tug the whole lot shut. Then we waited. Gadget Man got tired of this, so I took over. Eventually, the little bird fluttered in, and when she was two-thirds down the bottom, I tugged the string. The cage lid fell; the bird rocketed up -- and there was a flurry of feathers.

Success! Inwardly, I exalted. I had caught her, and would be able to return her to her mother.

The exultation lasted all of a split second, because the bird plummeted down and lay still on the bottom of the cage. Sir Talkalot reckoned he saw the cage lid hit the bird's neck and bounce up again. Although I was watching, I didn't capture the scene in such fine detail. In any case, it seemed that I had employed a very blunt version of Mme Guillotine, and had broken the bird's neck.

I was devastated. My good turn, my kindness had become a cruelness (though not as cruel as condemning her to death by starvation -- at least it was quick). Perhaps she didn't break her neck -- birds are prone to heart attacks as well -- but in any case she was dead, and I was left wishing I'd waited that fraction of a second longer, that I'd left the string-pulling to Gadget Man, anything, any little change that would have seen a different outcome.