Colby Harrison

The Day of the Hummingbird

One year, when the days were long, and the nights were short, I traveled to the house of my grandparents.  My parents had to work that week, and they were not comfortable with their young child remaining alone in the house every day.  As a family, it was decided that I would be taken to visit my grandparents for a week. I was very excited about this trip; it is not very often that I see my wonderful grandparents.  I packed my belongings quickly the night before the trip, including an Ipod, the dreaded summer reading assignment, and some games. 

Eventually, the morning came around, and I was driven to the abode of my grandparents.  The house is surrounded by a large, grassy yard, with a few small trees guarding the yard from the road and a forest behind the house.  The driveway is fairly wide, and on either side of it lies a thin but deep ditch.  There is a carport with a plastic birdfeeder on the side and a green rug on the floor.  Located behind the carport is a wooden deck with rocking chairs, a small table, and a thin screen.  The carport also includes stairs that carries a user to the basement, where there is another patio, except it is composed of cement.  The air around the house is very peaceful, and it smells like the rich outdoors.  Because of some weird neighbors, the only loud or unusual noises heard are from chickens who don’t know when to shut their yappers.

My parents said their hellos and goodbyes to my grandparents, and they went back home to work.  Grandma asked me about how school was going, and Grandpa joined the conversation after he gave me the wifi password.  The rest of the day was relatively uneventful, with me jumping on my pogo stick, riding an electric scooter, and playing games with Grandma and Grandpa. 

The next three days were very similar to the first; talking, playing, and getting some exercise.  The only main addition to the list of objectives was the frustrating summer reading assignment.  The required book assignment was already completed earlier in the summer, but the book assignment of choice was more difficult because I was stuck between two books.  The first book was Artemis Fowl; it wasn’t a great novel on which I would complete an assignment, so the second book, The House of the Scorpion, was the book I chose.  This assignment was something that occupied a short amount of my time each day, so it was more something to do rather than something to complete. 

The truly interesting part of the trip was on Thursday, when I was doing my daily portion of the summer reading project.  I was working in the screened-off porch when I heard the fluttering of wings, a noise that should have come from a swarm of bees. The noise was nervewracking until I looked up and saw two little hummingbirds hovering around the screen.  They stopped at some of the flowers and the birdfeeder, and then they stopped to decide their next target.  They both shot like an arrow back to the forest. Seeing wildlife around the area brightened my mood considerably, and I continued on my work.  It was a short fifteen minutes later that they came back with the startling speed of a gunshot into the screen in between me and the carport.

“Grandma!” I yelled as I opened the front door.

“What is it, baby?” she replied calmly.

“Two hummingbirds are stuck in the screen!”

“I’m coming.  Those little guys do that fairly often. You just have to help them get back out a little.”

I watched as she went outside, and as she went to poke the beak out of the screen, the small feathery creature freed itself and flew away with increasing speed.  The other bird was still stuck in the screen, so Grandma pushed the beak out gently with her pointer finger.  The bird stood on the screen for a moment, but it fell to fly weakly onto the carport guard rail.  Being twelve and excited at this turn of events, I went over to pet it.  The bird was a dwarf in size, but it had blue and green feathers as smooth as the clouds above.  Eventually, it flew onto another railing, this one at the edge of the driveway.  I ran over to it and Grandpa, who was alerted by this point, came to take a picture of me petting this young hummingbird.  It felt like days that I stood there until the bird lost its drunken state flew away with an unsteady path through the air.

Not only was seeing the bird stuck in the screen unexpected, it was also life-changing.  This experience brings joy to my heart when it is remembered, and I always hope for similar circumstances to occur again when I visit my grandparents.  I think of nature differently now than I did before, birds especially.  Animals are vulnerable to many obstacles, and it is a nice responsibility to help these animals to manuever around the obstacles.  Watching those small eyes look up at me with gratefulness made me realize that a person can make friends by being kind to those in need rather than laughing at their mistakes.