Defying Gravity

If you have seen the play “Wicked”, you will have to pause for a moment after reading the title of this blog and sing the song.  A FABULOUS song wasn’t it?  I might also pose the question, “Is gravity getting your down these days?”  Probably, it is.   If you saw the last blog, I mentioned a T-shirt I saw in that ever-entertaining, catalogue, “Wireless”.  It said, “ GRAVITY-IT’S NOT JUST A GOOD IDEA-IT’S THE LAW”.   Love that.

I think we all know, from watching floating astronauts that, yes, it looks like fun to be weightless, but actually, when I take a sip of coffee, I am thankful it goes down my throat rather than floating up to the ceiling.  However, each day we are treated to the sight of animals that defy gravity on a regular basis- the birds.  Of course, they aren’t defying it really, but with the addition of feathers, bones that are hollow and a skull filled with more air sacs than yours or mine, flight can happen and up, rather than down, they go.

However, I can see from watching my “pre-K”, fledglings that flight, of course, takes some practice, and using those wings does take some getting used to. I imagine we have all watched a young robin or other bird species that is more than happy to nest in your immediate vicinity, take those first halting and not always, ending well, flights.  The fledgling that misses the mark in the tree and ends up on your lawn, chirping and chirping for mom, is a sight that was pretty common in June in NE where I grew up.  I was one of those interfering kids who would scoop it up, call it abandoned, and entertain myself endlessly for the next few weeks: finding it worms, meticulously changing its Kleenex nest, “teaching” it, I thought to fly, and then, weeping buckets when it did and left me.

But from my perch near the window, cast propped on a low table, I can see that beyond those tentative flights from the nest, getting the hang of what their wings can do, still takes a while.  The bird feeder nearest the window is hung on a “shepherds hook” and when my little flock of young Titmice come to feed, they more or less have to queue up for a turn.  Whichever one ends up on the curve of the hook tends to momentarily become a victim of gravity and starts to sliiiiiiddde down.  What is amusing is how far down it will slide before it dawns on it to flutter its wings and get back to the top.

Likewise my young and ADORABLE, Carolina wrens, keep alighting on the clothesline, which starts to swing, throwing them off balance and into a fit of fluttering, but still hanging on.  I can’t say I have ever seen any of the adult wrens chose the clothesline as a perching place.  Then there are the insatiably hungry, White Wing Doves which will tackle ANY bird feeder, even those expressly designed for smaller birds and have to beat their wings so much to stay on that I would think they are expending more energy than they are gaining from the seed.

Young Golden Fronted woodpeckers, trying to get at the hummingbird feeder also do more flapping than any adult one, as they try to cling on to the rim and still be able to bend their body to get that long tongue into the hole.  The adults anchor themselves with their stiff tail as they wood in a tree. That skill is coming to these young ones, but it clearly takes learning.

Life is a learning curve for all of us. And I say again, if I had to break a leg, and be confined to the house, I couldn’t have picked a better season to do it in.  If, for any reason, you find yourself indoors when you would rather be out, I invite you to your window.  If you are fortunate enough to have trees or even just a windowsill in the city where pigeons will roost, there will be something to watch. 

And I have a feeling, when the weight of this cast comes off in another 6 weeks, please God,  my left leg will have a rush of feeling like it is pounds lighter and ready to defy gravity too.  Or not; perhaps you who have had experience with this would say “au contraire”, it will feel like a leaden muscle less weight; just gravity, having its way with me again. 

Stay grounded everyone and may you find joy in watching those creatures that aren’t!