The Snake, The Bird and The Tree
By Jody Gomez

One spring morning while I was washing dishes, my son Michael who was 7 at the time, came running in.  He was frantic and obviously upset. 

When I asked him what was wrong, he cried, “The snake has the bird! The snake has the bird!”

“What snake?” I inquired as I turned from the sink.

“The snake in the tree!” he cried.

The reason Michael was so upset was because every spring he appoints himself watch-keeper of all the sparrows that nested under the eaves of our front and back porches.  He watches while the adult birds gather twigs and leaves to build their nests. He makes sure the bird feeder is full of seed, and he waits and worries for the eggs to hatch and the babies to grow old enough to fly away on their own. Occasionally, a baby sparrow will be found dead or half eaten, but Michael accepts this as part of nature’s plan.

I was thinking of these things as I tried to calm Michael down.  I explained that the snake with the bird in the tree was the way life went for the wild animals.  Even though snakes are repulsive, they do have their place in this world.  Unfortunately, Michael would not be deterred or calmed down, and all he could say was,

“We have to do something!  We have to save the baby bird!”

Sighing, I told him to go get my husband, Mike.  Michael ran down to the barn where his dad was cleaning horses stalls.  I could still hear him crying about the bird in the snake’s mouth.

Upon hearing Michael’s story, Mike also tried to explain about nature’s way.  Once again, Michael would not be deterred, so we decided to investigate.

I assumed the bird would be beyond help but instead, the young bird calmly hanged by his wing from the mouth of a gopher snake who was coiled around the limb of one of the shade trees at the south-end of our house.  Every now and then the little bird would flap his free wing in an attempt to free himself, then realize he was stuck and give up.

My heart went out to the little bird, and I told my husband he had to do something.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Mike.

“I don’t know,” I said “but do something!”

I could see by the way the bird was caught that his death would have been a long and painful one.  I knew my son would stay by the tree worrying over the bird until the end, and I didn’t feel that Michael should witness something like that at his age.

Upon hearing all the commotion, my nine-year-old son, Zachary, joined Michael and I on the front yard side of the chain link fence.  My husband, the snake, the bird and the tree were on the back yard side of the fence.  We talked back and forth through the fence to think up a great idea on how to save the bird from the snake.

Finally, Mike got a stool from the back porch and a three foot long piece of PVC pipe.  He placed the stool up against the tree and climbed up into the lower tree branches.

The boys and I were screaming suggestions to my husband as he poked at the snake in order to convince it to release the bird from its mouth.   The snake was understandably offended by this assault on its peaceful lunch, so it started swinging its head and body toward Mike as if to bite him. To say the least, the scene was pandemonium.  Michael was crying and screaming for his dad to save the little bird, I was cringing and screaming for Mike to be careful, and Zachary was yelling his suggestions as well.

Quickly Mike saw that he would get nowhere with the stick and decided to grab the snake with his hand instead.  The snake was still swinging its body back and forth toward Mike, so Mike took advantage of the snake’s forward motion and grabbed it behind the head.  The snake violently twisted its body around to get free and at this point, the boys and I panicked.

We screamed, “Throw it! Throw it!”

Mike promptly did as we instructed and threw the snake – right at us! Our screaming hit fevered pitch as we ran for our very lives away from the snake.  We could hear Mike howling with laughter and turned back to see what was so funny.  Mike was laughing so hard because the snake was on the opposite side of the fence from us, and in our run for our lives we had forgotten this small but very important detail.

We let out sighs of relief and started laughing ourselves, then it occurred to us that in our panic stricken fight for our survival against the gopher snake on the other side of the fence, it didn’t register to us that the snake dropped the bird when Mike grabbed it behind the head.

We were ecstatic that our attempts to save the poor little bird worked, so we quickly looked for it around the base of the tree so we could render any medical attention it might need.  It was then that the four of us noticed one of our dogs had also joined us in the fray.  She was standing at the foot of the tree happily swallowing the last bite of her little birdie treat.

It seems that when the snake dropped the bird, it landed right between our dog’s front feet, so she promptly ate him.  Michael’s laughter faded once again to tears, and the only words I could think of to say to him were,

“I’m so sorry honey, but at least he didn’t suffer.”