For today I had written a nice light post about trivial stuff that is happening here in Japan but we had a minor adventure that caused me to change course.  Here’s how it goes…

Satomi and I took a brief hiatus from picking oranges this afternoon so that we could make a follow up visit related to Satomi’s mission to have the neighbor stop discharging the water from her washing machine into her parent’s back yard.  Apparently, this has been going on for years and it is a smelly nuisance.  That, however, is a different story for a different time.  There may be a whole other post about her crusades to right the wrongs and bring justice to the downtrodden in our new town.

Anyway, were were driving back from our meeting when we saw a “tonbi”, Japanese Sea Eagle, on the center line of the road.  He had been hit.  It was still standing but it wasn’t moving looked really bad.  Its feathers were all ruffled, possibly from the impact or possibly because cars and trucks were whizzing by in both directions, inches from it.  It looked like it had been tumbled in a clothes dryer.  A crow was lurking close by with what looked like ominous intent.  Satomi screamed at me to stop and I pulled over at the next road.  She ran to a house and asked to borrow a box while I watched the usually proud bird stand in a stupor with traffic paying it no heed.  It only took a minute for her to return with a box and we ran down the sidewalk toward the bird.  The traffic just kept coming and coming.  A mini van saw that we were trying to help the bird and stopped in the road, stopping all the other traffic as well. We dashed out to load the bird into the box.  I was trying to scoop it up with the box because I didn’t know if he was dangerous or not.  Its talons were fearsome and its beak equally so.  I was making moderate but slow progress.  While I plodded along Satomi sprung into action.  She was wearing two layers of shirts.  She took off her purple Cirque de Soliel tee-shirt and grabbed the bird and put it in the box.  It made absolutely no sound or movement but, to me, it’s eyes looked like they were relieved.

We hustled it back to the car.  “What now?” we thought.  We had a stunned raptor in our tiny Subaru R2 housed in a box that we couldn’t close because it was too small.  What if it sprung back to life!  Its wing appeared to be broken and was bent at an unwieldy angle but if he was passive because of fright we would still be in for trouble if he decided he wanted out of the car.

I had told Satomi’s parents that we would meet them in the field as soon as our meeting was done so that we could get as much done as possible.  Rain is expected tomorrow so we won’t be able to do much.  I wanted to go tell them we would be late but Satomi wanted to rush the bird to the animal hospital.  We knew the injuries weren’t going to heal enough for it to return to life in the wild but we hoped maybe the doctor would give it a shot and put it out of its misery.  Satomi won and off we went without letting her parent’s know what had happened to us.  I insisted on stopping by the grocery store for a bigger box.  I won that battle and 30 minutes later we arrived at the animal hospital with the bird secure in a bigger box and still docile, except for a little scratching the side of the box when the engine hit a certain RPM.

Satomi rushed in and was back in 20 seconds. She had been told by the receptionist that they were not willing to even consider helping.  The animal hospital said they wanted nothing to do with a wild animal.  They only helped cats and dogs.  I suggested to Satomi that maybe they should advertise themselves as a pet hospital instead of an animal hospital.  Better yet, a cat and dog hospital.  Satomi wasn’t doing well.  The really empathizes with animals and can’t stand to see them suffer in the least. A stressed out mess, she said that there was one other animal hospital in town.  Again, we were off.  That one didn’t go well either.  At the end of her rope, she snapped when that doctor said that wild animals should be returned to the wild to die naturally.  I sort of agreed but I also agreed with Satomi who said that being hit by a car made this bird’s situation not part of the natural cycle of life for a bird.  The doctor retreated, seeking safe shelter in his office as his wife apologized profusely. Again, we headed down the road with our injured bird.  We had kind of bonded with our boxed bird by that time and I had a sad, sinking feeling.  I weakly offered to put the bird out of its misery myself if Satomi felt that strongly about it but I don’t know if I could do it. Something in the bird’s demeanor made me think that it wouldn’t want that. We decided to think it over while we drove back to our town.

In the end we did take the second doctor’s advice(not because we wanted to but because we thought it was more humane than continuing to drive an injured bird to and fro) and brought the bird to the mountains to die as naturally as a bird can when it has been hit by a truck and had its wing, and probably more, broken.  We found a nice place on the mountain, next to one of Satomi’s parent’s fields with a view of the sea and I slid it out of his box onto the grass.  He was still alert and there was a calm emanating from his deep brown eyes.  It didn’t move except when I tried to pull Satomi’s purple tee-shirt from its jet black talons. There was still a lot of strength there.  It clung tightly to the shirt. We left the shirt with the bird and headed to the orange field to make our apologies and get some work done. Neither of us could stop thinking about the bird. Satomi wanted to go check on the bird and give it some water after we finished in the field but I didn’t want to.  So we didn’t.  Nature is taking it’s course right now.  If it is still alive it probably won’t be for long.  The rain is coming and the temperature will be dropping soon.  It’s sad.  It feels like we lost a friend even though we only spent two hours together and the bird was in a box most of the time.  The image of the stunned bird in the middle of the rushing traffic is burned into my mind.  And the eyes too.  So alive and proud even when broken beyond repair.

It isn’t fun leaving a friend to die alone in the woods but we did it and it was probably the right thing to do.

–The Green Tea Dreamer