Dispatch #18: On Abandoning a Baby Hawk
And Not Owning Up To It--Until Now
I’m so tired of death. But death never tires.
Two weeks ago, I learned that a sweet, funny, and kind woman I knew lost her battle with cancer on June 30th. She was 53—three years younger than I am. The last time I saw her was in late September 2021 when my spouse and I visited her and her partner Mateo in Colorado. Juliet, Mateo, and I had met in 2009 at Tassajara when we were on the dining room crew during the summer guest season. We were a tight-knit crew, and it was a magical summer filled with tiny mysteries.
I’m writing about Juliet’s passing because I am saddened by it, and because in the past year, there’s been a series of untimely deaths of several Dharma friends:
In early August, my Dharma friend Curtis died in his sleep. He was 50 years old and left behind his wife and their young daughter. In late October, my friend Myōho (her Dharma name) died after battling cancer for more than a year. She had just turned 49. In early February 2024, Jeffrey, a long-time resident at City Center, died in his apartment in the same building where me and my spouse and many other San Francisco Zen Center residents live. He was in his 70s. I was present when they found his body. In March 2024, Caroline, a Tassajara resident, died while hiking a well-trodden trail in the wilderness. She was 32. And now, dear Juliet.
The other event that’s compelling me to write this post is a confession that has been weighing on my heart-mind for a few weeks.
One evening, in mid-June, when it was close to 8 PM, and the temperature during the day had tip-toed over 90, I was sticky, weary, and grumpy. So I decided to skip meditation and head to the extremely cold shower at the pool, which is a short walk from my room. (None of the cabins or rooms at the monastery have showers. Besides the pool, there are showers in the Japanese styled bathhouse.)
As I approached the back gate of the pool area, I heard faint bird sounds: cheep, cheep, cheep. I latched the gate behind me. Cheep, cheep, cheep. As I walked alongside the pool—which shimmered like a rectangular, liquid, baby-blue moon—my eyes scanned the immediate area in the direction of the distress.
In the fuzzy twilight, it was nearly impossible for my aging eyes to discern what was happening on the pool deck about 20 yards in front of me. As I walked closer, I could make out that a Steller’s jay was stabbing some fluffy, beigey, blobby thingy on the deck. Amid the cheep, cheep, cheep, I heard the peck, peck, peck, of the jay’s steely beak.
My pace went from a stroll to a trot as I rushed to the scene and shooed the jay away. It did not flee far. It just alighted on the backrest of a plastic pool chair. It fixed its pre-historic, predatory gaze on both of us. These fierce jays are ubiquitous in the valley. I’ve witnessed them swooping through the courtyard where we eat and deftly stealing a piece of food off someone’s fork!
I stooped over and peered at the fuzzy, beigy, blobby thing. It was a “capsized” baby bird. She was toppled on her side with her tattered right wing extended. I did not see any blood in the dark. I didn’t know what species of bird it was. All I knew was that each cheep felt like a tiny dagger in my heart.
In my back pocket, I had stuffed a clean, thin T-shirt that I had intended to change into after my shower. I pulled it out, swaddled the chick as gingerly as I could, helped her right herself, and cradled her in both hands. I cooed to her as if she were an infant. Cheep, cheep, cheep. She shook her downy body. She was flustered, fearful, and forlorn.
I marched past the evil jay and pulled the baby bird close to my abdomen. I cursed the jay as I brought my fluffy charge into the bathroom and set her down on the sink counter. She already seemed calmer and wasn’t cheeping as much. I gently slipped my t-shirt swaddle away and wrapped her in some brown paper towels.
When I emerged from my quick, cold shower, I dressed while my skin was still wet, slipped my feet into my Birkenstocks and hoped the baby bird hadn’t died or fallen off the counter. In retrospect, it seems odd that I chose to place her on the counter rather than the bathroom floor. Some atavistic part of my brain sensed that placing her on the floor would endanger her even though I closed the door to keep the jay out.
She was still there. Waiting. Wondering.
I picked her up and walked outside. With hope in my heart, I scanned the canopy of persimmon trees for a nest. I spotted a robin gazing down at us with a quizzical look. Since I know nearly nothing about birds, a thought flashed through my mind that the chick cozied in my hands might be a robin. But one glance at the chick and the robin and I was disabused of this idea: it was obvious even to my non-birder brain that the baby bird was wider and almost as tall as an adult robin.
I stood under the canopy of wide green leaves, wishing I could toss the chick into the air and watch her mother magically materialize, catch her offspring in midair, and carry her back to the nest. Cheep . . . cheep . . . cheep. I looked at the robin again for guidance. His breast a red beacon: A pair of jays perched nearby in a persimmon tree with their black, beady-eyed glare reminded me of this chick’s fate.
Sobs exploded from my gut and poured through my eyes. I felt helpless, cheep, hopeless, cheep, and bereft. The fragility of life quaked through me. The ineluctable fate of every. living. being. surged through me like a river rushing off a cliff.
Self Pity
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself. —D. H. Lawrence
Since most everyone was in the meditation hall, I had no one to confer with about next steps. And since I was playing hooky, I was hesitant to announce my truancy by knocking on the one door where I saw light on. In a wee bit of a mental fog, I walked back toward the upper barn—an actual barn that was converted decades ago into ten small rooms. As I walked up the back stairs into the bathroom area, I felt like a teenager slipping through the back door after curfew.
I was grateful that no one was there. I had no idea what I would say to someone. I was feeling so vulnerable that if someone had been there, the slow trickle of tears would swell to sobs. I placed the chick on the long concrete counter with three sinks in it. She blinked a few times. I wet my finger and offered its wet tip to her beak. It was a futile attempt. I stood around for a moment.
A sinking feeling sunk my gut. I knew I had to leave her and that I should not leave her. The dark cloaked my shame and sadness as I shuffled back to my room.
Shame and sadness followed me like a shadow the next morning as I walked past the upper barn. I dared not enter the bathroom.
Every morning at 8:30 the community gathers in what we call “work circle” to hear important announcements about arrivals, departures, the weather, schedule changes, etc. The last announcement by the work leader is asking people if they lost or found something.
“Has anyone lost a baby hawk? It was found in the upper barn bathroom last night. Someone took it into their room over night.”
Had I not been the person who abandoned the baby hawk, I might have smiled at this quirky announcement. Who was the heartless human who abandoned a baby hawk? I stared at the gravelly dirt. The adult Catholic in me wanted to blurt out “Mea culpa, mea culpa,” and prostrate in front of 50 onlookers. The teenager in me kept quiet.
What exacerbates my sense of remorse is that hawks are one of my favorite animals, wolves and whales rounding out the trifecta of awe-inspiring-ness. Although I’ve yet to see a wolf or a whale in the wilderness, my eyes spot hawks everywhere: perched on street lamps, swooping through San Francisco sky to grab a tiny mouse from behind a dumpster, and soaring over head as I march up the mountain road. Once, I even spotted a large red-shouldered hawk hanging out in a tree near a mall in Monterey, CA.
[Indulge me this aside: Last year, I read this stunningly brilliant memoir called H Is for Hawk. The author Helen Macdonald adopts a fierce goshawk to train as a way to deal with her overwhelming grief and despondency after her father’s sudden death. Macdonald masterfully weaves her tale with that of the troubled genius T. H. White, a fellow falconer who wrote The Once and Future King.]
Immediately after the work circle, I walked solemnly and sheepishly back to my office. When the abiding teacher Leslie popped in to chat, before she could say anything, I blurted out that I had abandoned the baby hawk. I was back in the Catholic confessional box of my adolescence, seeking absolution for my sin from an authority figure. None came. And none was needed.
“Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing.” — Suzuki Roshi
If Tassajara is still operating when I die, one day someone will make an announcement about my death at work circle. I wonder who, if anyone, will offer words about what kind of person I was and how long I lived at Tassajara. Maybe a few people will cry.
A piece of paper with my name printed on it will be taped to a small, rectangular plaque and set on a collapsible wooden stand. They’ll be a photo of me next to it. The officiating priest, who might not even know me, will take that plaque and circle it three times above the incensor, lift me up, bow her head, and then place me back in the plaque.
I don’t know what happened to the baby hawk. The guy who took it into his room released it alongside the creek the next morning. When he returned a couple of hours later, she was gone.
Prompt: What are some experiences you’ve had with trying to save wild animals?
Such a good quote about self-pity. Such a vivid picture of your experience. Thank you.
Thank you for this, Shoren. It touched me because I had a similar experience just last year. One afternoon I was calling our cat Butters, to come inside from his “kingdom” the back yard. When I spotted him, he had a baby-almost juvenile Mocking bird in his mouth!! I scolded him and he immediately dropped the still-live bird from his mouth. The bird was now hiding somewhere in the jade plants on the side yard. I had to attempt to save it. There was no way for it to be returned to its parents now, even though they were just above on the neighbor’s roofing calling for it. Oh the grief!!! I got an old bird cage from the garage, cleaned it, put water and a live worm in a feeder, caught the bird and placed the cage on top of the trash bins, off the ground. This way the parents could communicate and see it. I covered the cage with a towel that night, and planned to take it to the Silicon Valley animal sanctuary nearby the next morning. When I got up in the morning to see the baby, I found it dead in the cage. It hadn’t been wounded by the cat, but possibly it died from lack of food or water (it didn’t eat the worm). I was so sad!! I gathered her limp body, wrapped her in a cloth and buried her in the garden. A placed a stone atop the grave with “Baby” written on it. Almost daily I save insects, spiders, etc. To me, the acts are the Dharma. As with the bird, and our cat Mama that had to be suddenly euthanized last week, impermanence too finds me everywhere all the time. There in lies the glistening of Indra’s net. 🙏🙏🙏