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Ruby's Gone

Sunday, May 25, 2008

May 23, 2008

The impact shook the floor under my feet. A bird had hit the window of our downstairs bedroom—a big bird, and from the force of the impact I knew it would die. After 15 years in a house with big windows, you learn such things whether you want to or not.

She’d been coming to the back deck railing for three years: Ruby, a red-bellied woodpecker with two scarlet feathers in her gray forecrown. By these two small feathers I knew her, named her, and allowed myself into her world. I knew her mate, the male with wide black bars on his wings, and red feathers pulled down low over his eyes like bangs. Ruby waited for me every morning in the weeping willow, watching me at my morning routine, waiting for the mixture of peanut butter, cornmeal, oats and lard that I made and put out for her every day. I knew the sound of her voice and she knew mine, flying to the deck railing in expectation when she heard me first thing in the morning. I knew that when she hit the window she was feeding a brood of young in the woods behind the house. And here she was face down in the painted ferns beneath the window, stretching her wings one last time.
I looked down on myself, doubled over in grief with a dead woodpecker in my cupped hands. Another bird might hit the window; so many have, to be cradled with an abstract and fleeting sadness before I buried them. But I knew this woodpecker. It wasn’t just another bird. This still-warm body in my hands was Ruby.

I listen to reports from China every afternoon. Tsunamis, cyclones, earthquakes; the sheer scope of their destruction can numb us, cast us into the realm of the surreal, our ears closed and our minds floating away. In one, I heard a doctor speaking in halting English about the flood of patients he was seeing, most of them living in tents or under tarpaulins, all of them showing the effects of exposure and inestimable loss. He spoke matter-of-factly about his efforts to help as many as possible. At the end of the report, it was revealed that the doctor’s 26-year-old daughter had been lost in the earthquake; that he was working doubled over by his own grief, the greatest a parent can know. I pulled my car over, laid my head on the steering wheel, and wept.

In a classic children’s story, the Velveteen Rabbit becomes real when a boy loves him enough. The toy, tattered from too many hugs, sheds its threadbare skin and leaps and gambols at night with real rabbits in a moonlit meadow. So do stricken people in a far-flung land, and yes, even woodpeckers, become real in our minds and hearts. In the end, I think, it’s better to have listened for their voices, to have allowed ourselves into their world, to sit down sometimes and weep for them.My last photo of Ruby, taken May 22, 2008.

29 comments:

I'm so sorry you lost Ruby. I agree that it's far better to let oneself into the world of birds and animals, knowing that the view might be painful and may end with an aching heart.

The post was a lovely tribute to her. We share your grief.

I'm so sorry, Julie.

Oh, Julie. How sad. Your words are lovely, what a beautiful tribute.

How sad, and how ironic that this was one of the individual birds you'd introduced your readership to not long ago, so we all feel like we knew her.

I recently lost a male downy who landed at my front doorstep after a window strike, but his mate continues to visit the suet feeder along with the babies the two raised this spring (...and a pair of red-bellieds are bringing their younguns to the feeder as well). Hope many of Ruby's offspring come your way.

Oh, I am so sorry to hear about Ruby. Your previous post about her caused me to start watching the regulars at my feeders more closely, including a beautiful red-bellied woodpecker much like Ruby. Just reading the title of this post hit my gut. It's so hard to lose a friend ...

What happens to Ruby's chicks? Are you (or someone) able to care for them?

I'm so so sorry. Do you know where her nest is? Is her mate caring for the babies or can you retrieve them? When we lose ourselves in caring for survivors, grief becomes, for a while, a little less unbearable. Bless you for sharing Ruby with us, and making us mindful that all lives, close to home and afar, are precious.

I caught myself while reading this bamming my fist into the table shouting no...no. So, I can't even begin to comprehend how you must feel.

I don't think I've ever consciously acknowledged the fact that I can get attached to other people's world through a blog. But here it is.

I have to believe that nature, in all her capacity to restore, will send some other miracle your way to honor the place of this beloved part of your daily ritual.

Your post was lovely in a heartbreaking way. I'm so sorry that you had to experience the death of an animal you've come to know and love on a personal basis.

Having "met" Ruby on your blog, too, I feel that pain. Your photos of her are amazing.

May you always be reminded
when fiery skies ignite
of all your time with Ruby
before her final flight.

Oh, Julie, I'm so sorry. I hate to lose any bird to a window strike, but when it is one you "know," and who knows" you, it is like losing a friend.

{{{Hugs}}}

~Kathi

Julie, I'm so sorry for your loss. Thank you for the beautiful tribute to Ruby.

Dear Julie,

Huge knot in throat. I share your grief and thank you for introducing her to me before...

I want to believe TR's prediction of nature giving back what you have lost.

Magic?

Hugs,
Mary

Thank you, everyone. I wrote this when I was freshly grieving, but I'm better now. Life has gone on. Ruby was startled into banging into the window by the sudden appearance of a low-flying turkey vulture. Everyone freaked out, the mourning doves exploded, as they will, and bam! my sweet Ruby was dying. The shadow of the vulture was passing over the scene even as I looked out to see who had hit.

I have to think her mate will keep feeding the young. I've no idea where they are, in a tree hole high up somewhere down in the woods, and there's really no way to find them or to help, other than to keep putting food out for him. I haven't seen him since that day, when he spent some time calling in the birch by where he'd last left her. It's all so sad.

And T.R., "No, Ruby, No!" were the only words I could get out.

Thank you, everyone. I wrote this when I was freshly grieving, but I'm better now. Life has gone on. Ruby was startled into banging into the window by the sudden appearance of a low-flying turkey vulture. Everyone freaked out, the mourning doves exploded, as they will, and bam! my sweet Ruby was dying. The shadow of the vulture was passing over the scene even as I looked out to see who had hit.

I have to think her mate will keep feeding the young. I've no idea where they are, in a tree hole high up somewhere down in the woods, and there's really no way to find them or to help, other than to keep putting food out for him. I haven't seen him since that day, when he spent some time calling in the birch by where he'd last left her. It's all so sad.

And T.R., "No, Ruby, No!" were the only words I could get out.

Julie, you should hang things in your windows like sun catchers or anything that will break the illusion that it's not an open space. My mom does this and she has her knickknacks lined up along the sill and it seems to work because we haven't had anymore incidents.

So sad about Ruby.
You give all your animals such loving care, even after the spark goes out.
It shows such reverence for life.
Thank you.

I feel your grief, Julie. Many of us do get attached to several of our backyard visitors. I do hope her babies are being well cared for.

Julie, I'm so sorry, but I'm glad that you shared this. Looking at these posts ahead of mine, I'm also glad that so many people "get it".

Years ago I startled a sharpie who happened to have a male red-bellied in its talons. It wasn't a window strike (which carries a different kind of grief), but he was my first red-bellied. I'll never forget the image.

DCloud:

Julie has all sorts of things hanging from her windows, including a system of fishing lines and brightly colored feathers (I forget the name of this product). It helps immensely when birds have time to look, but nothing can protect against the sudden burst of a panicked bird (or flock) when they are frightened by a predator.

~Kathi

That's hard Julie. I'm just glad you are the kind of person who feels grief over the death of a woodpecker.

Julie, I am sorry to hear this. And I very much appreciate your closing thoughts. They speak to something so much bigger than one woodpecker (as beautiful, loved, and important as she was). This is a sad way to begin Monday morning but at the same time a thoughtful and uplifting one. Thank you.

Julie, I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes, sad for Ruby's loss, but grateful for your having introduced us to her.

I can feel for you on this one, I have had more than my share of hitting the windows. What I now do is hang something sparkling in the windows or put nic nacs and pray they see them in time. Margaret

All this grief caused by the silhouette of a vulture.
I'm sorry for you, Julie. It's like reading the obits in the paper and seeing strangers. Then reading some more and seeing someone you know. It becomes personal.
Let's hope that Mr. Ruby can handle the baby-rearing duties. Let's hope the babies are on the older end of babyhood so he doesn't exhaust himself. Let's hope we see a post in the near future of Ruby's babies coming to sample the suet dough.

Such a sad post, but it is a universal feeling of shared sadness we have all had a bird hit the window, even if it is a bird unknown to me I still mourn for the tiny little soft life that these feathers held...sorry for your loss of this beauty...(my windows like Julie's are covered with so many sun catchers...it could not be helped...)

I'm a lurker reader and on occasion comment on your blog. I'm so sorry to read about Ruby. The more I am learning to appreciate nature I am learning about the nature of all things good and bad. I appreciate your heart felt posts and your genuine emotions. Thanks for sharing all that you do and see.

My condolences, Julie.

How sad you must be, Julie. So sorry for the pain you must feel. The post about Ruby was so recent and a great tribute to her. We humans open ourselves up to a lot of pain; but along with it comes much joy. Unfortunately life in the natural world can be tough to take.

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