A Christmas Humming Bird at Our Front Door

This morning, Kris stepped out the front door. Her alarmed cry had me thinking she slipped on the porch steps.

“There’s a little humming bird on the sidewalk. I don’t think it’s dead yet. I saw his chest move. Do Something! He can’t just lie there, and die.”

I ran to the bathroom for a towel, something to hold him in. Something to warm him.

Such a tiny ball of feathers. What a brilliant cape. Is that famous reindeer's nose as colorful? Certainly, not as tiny as this colorful creature.

I wrapped him gently in a bath wash cloth. His beady eyes, the size of pin heads, followed me. He was quiet, wrapped loosely in the cloth. While I hurried to get sugar water ready, and raided the pen bouquet for red flowers, his iridescent purple-hot pink cloak and pointed jousting pole flicked to keep me in view.

Little Guy was in the thick of my activity at the sink counter. Once, I forgot and nearly used his blanket for a towel.  So I cradled his wrap like a sling—an ER stretcher—and when moving him, a cover slipped away. He jetted to and hummed at the sink window until I got the cloth around him. His black standard of a beak twisted above a cloud of sea foam colored wash cloth while it lay on a Redbook magazine at the table.  I raced to get the outdoor feeder cleaned and filled.

Neighbor, Kathy Piggott knocked.  Buster went into his watch-dog mode. We talked. When I returned to the kitchen a minute later the wash cloth comforter was empty.

Oh, no! Where is he?

A low hum from the sky-light gave away the escapee. Gently chasing (herding?) with a broom finally wore the little guy out. He auto-rotored to the floor. I draped his bedding over him, and he hopped into it.

While I was finishing the feeder, he slipped from his enclosing grotto and rushed to the skylight a second time. He had no interest in the broom. I moved away the cutting board cart, and set up the ladder. After pantomiming at cleaning the skylight for what seemed minutes with the wash cloth, Wild One decided to perch on his blanky.

Safely (oh, really?) cuddled I finished pouring hot, sterile sugar water into the feeder and took it out to hang over the deck; closer and easier to care for than the hike across pooch-pooh landmines at the dogwood tree.

No sooner had I returned to the kitchen sink, a second hummer was at the feeder. She didn’t like the hot food, so hovered around sipping wet drips on the feeder surface, under the plastic flowers.

I had tried to present the patient a silk poinsettia dipped in sweet water, and finally wiped it over his beak until a couple droplets dangled from his ebony tooth pick. A second attempt after putting out the feeder was a pink Scotch scrub pad dipped into the sweetened water. He didn’t like that, either.

I had to think; and calm my own tense nerves. I sat down at the table, and we stared at each other over the poinsettia bloom. I wondered what he thought of the strange surroundings. I wondered if he had been saved before. He seemed so calm. Maybe, Dickson’s our three feeder neighbors, had been nurse-maids to him, previously?

He was “dead”, rather in a torpor, when we first saw him. Other than the calming effect of the wash cloth wrap, he seemed ready to fly and be gone.

One last time, I carried him, to the kitchen sliding door; and, opened his blanket. The feeder is ready, Little One. He sprinted to a dogwood twig, scolded me, then darted over the house roof on to his earlier task.