The Emperor’s Admonition

“Let me tell you,” chirped an elderly little bird to his grand-chicks, “about the day a hummingbird feeder blew down and injured my wing.” He held up rumpled feathers the color of African violets, separating them to show the scars.

“I was a young bird then, gallivanting about all afternoon, having a picnic lunch of sugar water, snacking on the nectar out of a field of daisies, looking for a mate.”

“But out of nowhere the hot sun of midday gave way to a twilight summer breeze. From there it grew even darker, not from dusk, but from a sudden summer lightening storm.”

“The human girl who would refill the sugar water sheltered in her big person-house, a home big enough for a hundred thousand hummingbirds. But her flip flops, which she had kicked off on her front porch, were scattered by the branch-bending wind.”

“But why were you crushed, grandpa?” chirped a fledgling. “How did you heal?” interrupted another, flipping up an iridescent green wing.

“Well, the bird-feeder looked like a house to me, so I tried to take shelter in it and couldn’t. It fell sometime in the attempt, and I was so tangled up with it I couldn’t fly. When the girl lifted it off of me the next morning after the storm, I was barely alive, but she drove me to the vet,” said the elderly bird with his weathered, but still purple, plumage. He stood to his full four-inch height, wearing his royally colored feathers like an emperor as he conveyed his wisdom.

“And that is why, little birds, you should look carefully at the clouds before your picnic, and have a plan in mind should a storm come in a summer afternoon.”