Sustain & Reprieve: An Ode to a Bird Named Basil
One day, as Emmi was cooking eggs, she realized that a mourning dove made their nest on our balcony.
For the past month or so, maybe two months, Emmi’s been caring for some birds on our balcony. She went out to water the basil one morning, and she saw a mourning dove resting in the middle of the plant. As she tried to shoo them away, she saw that they’d laid two eggs in the basil. It went from being some huge inconvenience that the bird was sitting in our herbs to something very exciting. Ironically, she was also cooking eggs as she made this discovery.
She proceeded to do some research into mourning doves and learned that they rest on the eggs in shifts. Usually the mother will watch for a handful or hours and then at some point, dad will take over. She also learned that males usually have a little shade of pink in their face. Family members also told us that mourning doves will usually return to the same place to make their nest each mating season, and they’re monogamous, and the babies will usually return to the nest. She quickly named the birds Gertrude (Gertie) and Oswald (Ozzy). Before the eggs were on the verge of hatching, Gertie would also let Emmi pet her. It was nice.
I usually avoided the birds, because I didn’t want to risk them trying to fly up and claw at me. I also didn’t want to risk having them fly inside our apartment and opening another can of worms. It also created a difficult conundrum of watering the basil, because not only did we want the herbs to survive, but Emmi wanted to make sure that the birds’ new home wouldn’t be wilting.
We spent a lot of time watering around the birds, getting swatted at by wings and pecked at (mostly be Ozzy), but it was always a nice little distraction. The past six months have been a difficult time since getting laid off, and the birds offered nice reprieve. Especially as I was watering them, it was a nice break. Sustain.
There were some worries while watering the basil. Not only just getting pecked at, but I was always worried that the water would somehow be too cold for the eggs and make it hard for them to hatch. Would the water somehow drown the eggs.
About two weeks ago, Emmi and I were walking back from getting bagels, and she was worried that something had happened to the eggs. She didn’t really have any basis, but she was eager for the eggs to hatch, and she was preparing to head to her parents’ place to housesit for about a week. While we were approaching the house, she said, “But what if the babies are dead?” I do think that as we paused in front of our door, we could hear some excessive chirping. More than we’d usually hear in our neighborhood. Sustain.
When we went up, Emmi went to go peak in the basil, and she saw that the eggs had hatched! She quickly named the newborns (Basil and Flax, after the plant that they’d been born in and the seeds that we’d left out in a bowl for their parents). Almost immediately after catching a small glimpse, Ozzy sat on the babies. Can’t blame him. You need to protect your babies, and he doesn’t know us from Adam.
After Emmi went to her parents’ place, it was my duty to water the plants, but more importantly, send photos of the baby birds. She gave me detailed instructions so that the plants wouldn’t die on my watch, and honestly, I found peace in watering each day. I don’t think that I have a green thumb, but it was a nice little reprieve each day. As I found a fitting lull in each work day, I found the time to head out, water the flowers, fill the watering can, dump some mason jars of water into the hanging flowers. Sustain.
Of course, watering the basil was always a chore. Not only did I want to get photos for Emmi (well, she really demanded them), but my worries were the same as I was watering with the newborns. Was the cold water going to be too much for them? Would I somehow drown them under Ozzy or Gertie? Not only that, whichever bird that was on duty would incessantly peck if I tried to move the leaves around, or they would try to bat their wings at the watering can. Trying to maneuver around has always been a chore.
Still, I managed to get some good photos, and I felt like I adequately watered the basil (along with all the other plants), before I had to leave for the holiday weekend. To some extent, I felt like Tony Soprano watching the ducks in his pool. Even though I didn’t want to get pecked at, I was pretty excited to toss some seeds into the jar, trying to get some photos. I feel like if Tony was around for the advent of social media, he would’ve overloaded his Facebook timeline with iPhone photos of the ducks in the pool, sort of like what Emmi did for the birds, offering updates on her Instagram Story.
When we got back for the long weekend, Emmi made a beeline for the birds, and even though Oswald was seated on top of them, they were very clearly much bigger. We had a much better view of the baby birds.
After a little bit of chilling and dinner, Emmi went to go take a look at the birds before she went to clean up for the evening. She noticed neither parent was in the basil. It was just the babies. We had the best view that we could have of the babies.
Since it was also a rare opportunity to probably not get pecked at, Emmi decided to snip to try to get some basil from the plant. While she was snipping, I went back inside, and I heard her yelp from the balcony.
“Basil [the bird] flew.”
She pointed down to the sidewalk across from our apartment and said that she thinks that she scared him, and he leapt from the balcony and flew down. “Watch from here and make sure he doesn’t move.” She ran downstairs, and as she got down the stairs, he flew out of my sight line behind a car on our side of the street.
As she started to look for him, I went down and grabbed an empty Amazon box from our apartment. I knew that she wanted to get him back up to our place, but we didn’t really know the logistics. My thinking was that if we could get him in the box, we could get him out on the balcony and out there.
We ended up wandering around the street for some time trying to keep track of him, including when he would flutter off under a car somewhere. Two women stood and pointed at different birds who were close, as Emmi panicked and told them about the birds that made their home in our basil.
Our neighbor who has the balcony right next to ours was also out for a walk with her grandson, and was asking us about if the baby had gotten away. As Basil was sitting on a fence, Emmi snapped a photo, knowing that we may not be able to get him back up to our balcony.
Eventually, he flew next to a car on the other side of the fence. I tried to sneak up and get him in the box, but then he flew to a particularly green part of that person’s yard, with bushes and weeds, and we knew we wouldn’t be able to get to him.
We waved. Emmi started tearing up, and I tried to ease the mood, but I was also sad. I thought about how it would’ve felt when the birds eventually flew off on their own, offering some sustain and distraction from the shittiness of my work situation, the current political climate, and the crawl of time.
When we got back to the apartment, Emmi let out some more tears on the couch, and I tried to comfort her. I kept telling her what I keep telling myself: they were going to fly eventually. Her mom told her that they may just be the way that the parents let the babies know that it’s time to fly. I also reminded her of what her brother said that mourning doves and their babies usually come back to the same place over and over again. So maybe, Basil will return to our basil.
What sticks out to me the most is that when Emmi called her brother to talk about the birds, he said, “He fell?” Emmi responded, “No, he soared!” Even though it’s sad to see him go out on his own, I’m going to remember that he soared. I don’t know that it was premature or not, but going off what Emmi said, he leapt out into the sunset. Basil was ready to fly. Ready to leave the basil. While I’m hoping that he can come back, I can only tell myself that he was ready to leave the nest.
I don’t think I’m going to end up going into a panic attack like Tony Soprano, but after all of that, I did come home and listen to “Piano Player” by The Hotelier to feel some shit.