Answer:
Step-by-step explanation:
Last week a robin flew into my kitchen window. It hovered and scratched and beat its wings against the glass.
I stood and watched as it stared at me through the window, its head turned to the side, its red belly pumping with its effort to get through, into my world. Then it flew away.
I was seven days into quarantine, making the best of the COVID-19 lockdown. Being at home in Connecticut means it’s still cold in March, the trees are bare, the grass is brown. It’s damp and rainy most days and the sun hasn’t been out for more than a few hours.
I wondered if the bird sensed the warmth in my house, if it saw the houseplants on my counters, and if it was as sick of the winter as I was.
The next day, the bird came back. It smacked itself into the window, over and over, and repeating this strange, self-destructive behavior, all day long. It paused only for a moment at a time, catching its breath on the railing of my deck, resting, and then tried again.
Sometimes birds see their own reflection in glass and they try to mate with their own mirrored image. They see themselves, thinking they see a perfect other, and they go for it, over and over, determined to mate, to get to the other bird, thinking it’s the love of their life. They don’t learn the first time, or the second time, or even the fiftieth, that it's only their own reflection. Instead, they keep banging their head against the glass, over and over.
Instead, they keep banging their head against the glass, over and over.
I taped a miniature groop, a small rubber figurine, to the window. The bird just smashed himself into the glass around the figure, into a different window pane. I taped a photo of Kali, the goddess of the earth, the goddess who embodies feminine energy and creativity into the other window pane. Kali also has a lot of arms. I figured the waving arms would scare the bird away.
It worked for about an hour and then the bird was back.
I printed out a big smiley face. Taped that to the window. The robin kept flying into the glass. I taped a headshot of my son from his third-grade class photo. The day grew…