H is for Help and Hindrance

Saturday, my husband stood at the back door and called for me. Naturally, I ran at the sound of the Master's voice. Okay, stop laughing. I did go, though, because he never does that.

He had found a robin in the garden, entangled in a string he had stretched along the ground to aid in planting a straight row. Charlie had stretched the string, I mean, not the robin. The robin had…. Charlie had stretched the string, and the robin had become entangled in it.

Joetobomb

I ran and got the embroidery scissors — and, of course, my camera. After Joe had photobombed us, I got a picture of the poor robin's leg, all wrapped around with the string. I can only assume the robin was hunting worms in the garden and maybe got his claw hooked in the string on the ground, panicked, and flapped around until he'd snapped the string and wound himself up. He's lucky none of the local cats found him before Charlie did.

Charlie held the robin, who didn't peep or struggle or roll his eyes or twitch or pant or anything. The bird — a full-grown male robin — just held still while I carefully snipped and unwrapped until he was free. I've never seen a wild bird so calm in human hands. Charlie put him down on the porch, and he flew away into the woods. The robin did, I mean, not Charlie. This isn't magic realism, here, this is FACT. I hope the bird was all right, but we'll never know.

It has been called to my attention that some people believe I take a writing prompt and construct my post from it. That would be rather impressive. Actually, I write the post and then extract a writing prompt from it. So, from now on, my WRITING PROMPT will be called:

WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character rescues a bird. It can be a hummingbird, an eagle, a Roc, a Griffin or whatever.

MA