It probably matters, but I don't know what kind of bird it was. Young, for sure. A baby bird. In a trash can.
My grandfather had the whitest hair in the last years. I was helping him in the yard. In Arizona this means I was standing in sand, likely non-native sand, sand I would comb with a plastic rake that had a wooden handle. Sometimes I would get splinters from the rake as I'd drag it behind me, trying to keep the lines straight, trapsing across the desert landscape my grandfather had devised after forty years in the Midwest. The lines were the easy part, the wind-down portion of the mid-summer, afternoon chores. 114 degrees of hair-dryer heat, burn your foot-skin heat. I always thought I could just rake the gravel bare foot, just this once, and not feel the burn. I'd hop around, dragging that rake. My grandfather might be in the back, where there was grass, where the golf course was, where his zucchini got big.
One day I was clearing fallen cholla pads. They were doubly dangerous, and I needed padded gloves to handle them, pads littering the red volcanic rockbed near the base of an already spiny cactus. I carried them one or two at a time out in front of me as to not snag my yellow bicycle t-shirt, a sort of zombie gait toward the green wheely trash barrel with the flip-top lid. It was probably the six or seventh trip when my grandfather walked over.
"What is that there?" his hands were gloved too. His face real read, the bottom plane of his bifocal lens smudged with an obvious fingerprint.
"Is that a nest?" I answered.
"Gila woodpecker, maybe," he shrugged. "Wrens, probably."
He took the rake from me and flipped it around and held it like a pool cue when used as a jousting stick.
When you jostle a cholla, it tends to drop its pads. The spines are sharp and rigid, and they crunch a bit when they fall, hit the surface, compress, and spring back.
My grandpa was jostling the cholla now, trying to hook the nest onto the end of the rake handle. After about a minute, he sent me into the garage.
"Bring a shovel," he hollered after me. (Hollered, he loved that word.)
When I came back, he sidled a bit, and gestured with his round-round head for me to get on his other side.
"Put it underneath."
I lowered the shovel under a hanging limb and waited. He put the handle just under the
My grandfather had the whitest hair in the last years. I was helping him in the yard. In Arizona this means I was standing in sand, likely non-native sand, sand I would comb with a plastic rake that had a wooden handle. Sometimes I would get splinters from the rake as I'd drag it behind me, trying to keep the lines straight, trapsing across the desert landscape my grandfather had devised after forty years in the Midwest. The lines were the easy part, the wind-down portion of the mid-summer, afternoon chores. 114 degrees of hair-dryer heat, burn your foot-skin heat. I always thought I could just rake the gravel bare foot, just this once, and not feel the burn. I'd hop around, dragging that rake. My grandfather might be in the back, where there was grass, where the golf course was, where his zucchini got big.
One day I was clearing fallen cholla pads. They were doubly dangerous, and I needed padded gloves to handle them, pads littering the red volcanic rockbed near the base of an already spiny cactus. I carried them one or two at a time out in front of me as to not snag my yellow bicycle t-shirt, a sort of zombie gait toward the green wheely trash barrel with the flip-top lid. It was probably the six or seventh trip when my grandfather walked over.
"What is that there?" his hands were gloved too. His face real read, the bottom plane of his bifocal lens smudged with an obvious fingerprint.
"Is that a nest?" I answered.
"Gila woodpecker, maybe," he shrugged. "Wrens, probably."
He took the rake from me and flipped it around and held it like a pool cue when used as a jousting stick.
When you jostle a cholla, it tends to drop its pads. The spines are sharp and rigid, and they crunch a bit when they fall, hit the surface, compress, and spring back.
My grandpa was jostling the cholla now, trying to hook the nest onto the end of the rake handle. After about a minute, he sent me into the garage.
"Bring a shovel," he hollered after me. (Hollered, he loved that word.)
When I came back, he sidled a bit, and gestured with his round-round head for me to get on his other side.
"Put it underneath."
I lowered the shovel under a hanging limb and waited. He put the handle just under the
