"Death is just nature's way of telling you to slow down."

So we had an incident today.

The kids and I were innocently hanging out in the living room. All of a sudden, I heard the sound of a ball being thrown into the window. That is a sound that makes total sense in my house, so immediately I reacted with mom-rage with "Who is throwing balls? Who hit that window!"

Quinn said "That bird hit it!" said "What bird?" and went to look out the window. Quinn goes "That bird being dead there."

Poor birdie. There was indeed a little bird corpse on the ground in front of our window. I don't know what compelled him to try and fly through our window. Carelessness? Suicide? Flying while under the influence?

It was my favorite kind of bird too, a cardinal (wait, no, my favorite is a bald eagle. A bald eagle did not commit suicide in my picture window) What a way to end your life Full speed into my picture window and there you go. The end. So depressing!

We watched him for a little bit, to make sure he wasn't just stunned and passed out. I used the opportunity to give the kids a good lecture about how that bird should have been more careful, and that he should have been looking where he was going. I did make sure to throw in a cautionary tale about how people/birds who aren't careful might break their necks (wonder where I got that from?)

He did not awaken from his accident.

So I went to scoop him up a shovel and toss him in the ravine. Poor guy. But the whole time I had him on my shovel, I was very terrified that he was actually just knocked out or possibly was just fucking with me and planned to jump up and peck my eyes out. He didn't.

He had a burial at sea, in that he landed in the creek behind my house. Poor guy.

Anyway, you're probably like "Who cares? Dead bird. Ooh, exciting" Yeah, I'd probably see it that way except with kids, you see things through kids' eyes. The theme of the day today in terms of questions from the kids has definitely been death. They've been so sad all day for this poor bird. They kept bringing it up all day and talking about "Is the bird a Mommy? Where are her babies?" and "Do wolves like to eat dead birds?" and "Can we put him in the graveyard?" It was a kind of traumatic day for the guys.