My wife asked me to look outside because all night she heard a bird tweeting. I went outside, looked through the assorted outdoor chairs and BBQ pieces parts stacked up against the back wall of the house, awaking them from their winter hibernation. No signs of a nest or bird. I ventured into the attic but heard no bird and there were none to be seen.
The chirping and tweeting continuing unabated. After about a week of non-stop bird noise I called a professional wild critter catcher and a friend who’s a contractor. The two came on the same day. No sign of a bird in the attic. No signs of any holes in the outside of the house. A large hole was drilled in the wall and a video camera on a flexible arm was inserted. No sign of the bird, but it seemed to be scared by the scope, because the sound moved to another part of the wall.
Given the option of major destruction and re-construction of the wall to free the bird, we just resigned ourselves to the bird eventually dying, trapped in the wall. A couple more days passed, the sound continuing and I decided to widen the hole with the hope the bird would fly out. No such exodus for this amazing bird who never slept and sung all the time.
The next morning, awoken at 4:00 am by the Energizer Birdie, I decided to give the video camera another try. I rolled out of bed and the sound changed. It sounded like the bird was lower in the wall. Then I looked at my clock radio. It’s rectangular shaped with the speaker at the short end. I put my ear to the speaker.
How did this bird survive without water or food? It didn’t need any water and it ate electricity. The sound was part of a number of “natural” sounds and white noise the clock radio makes. I think my wife accidentally pushed the bird button and the bird was born. I pushed the off button and the sound that dominated our lives for about ten days immediately stopped. It was a revelation.
I had in my head the idea a bird was trapped in my bedroom wall despite all the facts that indicated otherwise. The space in the wall was too narrow for a bird to be in there. It never slept, always made noise but there was no way in or out. The reason the bird changed location when the hole was drilled was because I moved the clock radio onto the bed, pointing it in another direction.
But my belief continued and it was shared by others. Why? I can’t say that I know, but this is a common problem. How many people deny the fact of climate change, despite all the science showing that it’s happening and will continue to happen? How many countries are dedicated to wiping out terrorist groups, spending billions of dollars, without nearly as much effort finding out why people join such death cults and providing them with a different path?
Many of us are misdiagnosed before it’s finally determined we have cancer. I was treated for pneumonia (tumors were in my lungs) and someone else I know was treated for asthma (a tumor was strangling his esophagus, making it hard for him to breathe) before we were finally diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. How many people die of cancer because our health care professionals aren’t open to the fact their patients might have cancer, especially when the patients are in their 20’s and 30’s?
How many birds are trapped in the world’s walls and in our personal walls? We’re trying to find solutions to problems that don’t exist, because we don’t step back, look at the facts objectively and make rational decisions. Once we’ve convinced ourselves of a problem we dedicate ourselves to solving it. It’s that blind dedication to our illogical ignorance that’s the real problem.