I have a "no panic" policy when it comes to collisions with wild animals. I mean, if the choice is between killing an animal and losing control of my car, sorry wild animal, it isn’t a close call.
Even though my first instinct is to slam on the brakes or swerve to avoid it, I try to stay calm and just keep on driving. But one morning this summer, I was freaked by the sound of a bluejay crashing into my windshield from out of nowhere. I wouldn't say I panicked, but it was hard for me to catch my breath.
Something about the way this bluejay seemed to fall from the sky terrified me. One minute I'm driving down Montrose, thinking about replacement parts for the brain, and the next minute there's a bluejay plopped over sideways in the long gutter between my windshield wipers and my windshield, his neck at an odd angle, his feathers flared, one eye staring back at me. At least when I've crashed into birds before -- that pigeon on the toll road, that cardinal on the levee -- they'd bounced off the windshield and disappeared. This bluejay on the hood of my car was altogether more unsettling. His crooked face accused me.
He didn’t move, but I knew better than to assume that he was dead. Sure enough, he opened his eye, rolled down the hood of my car and flew, rather, flopped away. Diagnosis: traumatic concussion. I pulled into a gas station and parked. The rescue mission had begun.
When I made it to the scene of the accident, there was no sign of the bluejay, so I figured he’d made a full recovery and flown back up to his nest. Then I saw him hopping on freshly mown grass behind a tall wrought iron fence. He was moving erratically but silently, still delirious from the crash. His right wing appeared paralyzed, and his beak was stuck open like he was trying to sing a song but couldn’t, reminding me of a former patient of mine rendered mute by a brain stem stroke, speechless forever, forever unable to swallow. If I got the injured bluejay to a bird doctor, I wondered, could a feeding tube be inserted? I held my open hand out toward him, half believing he would walk across over and hop up on my palm. Instead, limping, he zig-zagged into the shadows of a holly bush.
Even though my first instinct is to slam on the brakes or swerve to avoid it, I try to stay calm and just keep on driving. But one morning this summer, I was freaked by the sound of a bluejay crashing into my windshield from out of nowhere. I wouldn't say I panicked, but it was hard for me to catch my breath.