We had a medical emergency at our house a few weeks back, but fortunately, after a little first-aid, an all-night nursing vigil, and a trip into town, we’re feeling a little bit better about things now.
Oh, the injured patient weighed 4 ounces and was about 3-1/2 inches long.
I had been mowing much of the day, an uncharacteristically cool and breezy one for so late in July in Indiana. As is most often the routine, I was following the mowing I do — both riding and pushing — by walking around my yard, weed trimmer in hand, snipping off the last defiant weeds and blades of grass that dare grow around the base of my pines or along our flower beds.
As I worked my way south along the road that runs with my property, I heard the victim before I ever saw her despite the ear plugs I wear for such jobs. She was a ruby-throated hummingbird, undoubtedly struck by a passing car, and she lay in the road, buzzing herself in desperate semi-circles as she tried to get a wing to work that obviously no longer was capable.
I bent down and scooped her up, and with the weed whacker in one hand, I held her in my palm, her heart thumping away so hard that the giant who now held her could feel it.
My wife, working at the kitchen sink, saw me walking toward the door, my hand cupped oddly against my stomach, looking down as if I’d cut myself, broken a bone, perhaps suffered a stroke. She knew that it had nearly become tradition for the two of us to make a fast trip to the doctor each summer so he could suture a gash, check a sprain, or deliver an injection to soothe hornet stings. She met me at the door wringing the dish towel in her hands.
When I opened my hand, it was as if my wife’s heart opened, too, for she took the bird into her hands and immediately began to fret about what we were to do.
Hummingbirds have a resting heart rate of about 250 beats a minute, but their in-flight rate soars to more than 1,200; our injured friend’s pulse was much closer to the latter figure, and it was apparent that she needed to eat and cool off as well. Hummers have to consume their own body weight in nectar or sugar every day, and I had no idea how long she had been flipping herself over in the road.
I took her to one of our feeders and sat her on a white, plastic perch in the hope that she would guzzle a little sugar water. She sat on the perch, tottering and unsteady as if drunk, but she couldn’t make herself drink. We literally shoved her nail-like nose into one of the feeder’s red flower-shaped watering holes, but not once did we see the tiny switchblade of her tongue lap up any of the life-giving sugar.
I was convinced that she would die, and that we would be wise to take her to the wood line and leave her there. I felt her broken wing, bent upward like a wind-ravaged screen door, would be her end. Joanie thought otherwise.
I have written before of a time when we nursed a hummingbird back to health; it had crashed into our picture window and knocked itself silly on the concrete walk by our front door. I must have sat for two hours with that bird, an eye-dropper of liquid ambrosia in hand, reviving her in a way that I didn’t feel our hit-and-run bird could be.
My wife promptly brought her inside, old wives’ tales be hanged. She rolled up an old towel, placed it in the bottom of a small cardboard box, then started feeding our new friend with that same eye dropper as the bird sat on the towel in the semi-darkness. Within an hour, she was bright-eyed and slugging down sugar water every 15 minutes, but she made no attempt to fly out of the open box.
That night, while I snored in imitation of that noisy weed trimmer of mine, my wife rose from her bed at virtually every hour on the clock to feed our injured friend. The next day, my bleary-eyed mate and I drove the bird into town to leave her for a lady who deals with injured wild animals. We didn’t know that savior’s name, but found out about her from a friend of a friend, or perhaps that friend’s cousin. Joanie had prepared a bottle of our homemade bird brew, and she even handed over our eye dropper; we’ll have to replace that soon for what could be next season’s dramas.
We have purposely tried to not find out the fate our little friend; we might not have wanted to know. But I do know that it is said that a hummingbird’s heart comprises about 2.5 percent of its total body weight, while a human heart, at a little under 11 ounces, is less than 0.5 percent of ours.
For some people, however, like my wife, for instance, I think it is much, much bigger.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com or by mail c/o the Tribune-Star at P.O. Box. 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. His second book, "Sidelines: The Best of the Basketball Stories…" is to be released this fall. Mike’s Web site is mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: The size of a heart does matter
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
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SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
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THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
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Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
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The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
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The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
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Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
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The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
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THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
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THE OFF SEASON: Craning to see elegance in flight
Just before midnight last night, spring officially slipped quietly into our back yards, but I doubt that any of us noticed it much this morning as we slurped our coffee or downed our eggs over this newspaper.
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The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped. Already, I have the overflow stacked on the floor and shoved into the spaces where previous tenants once lived. Gradually, expediency is replacing order, so fiction and non-fiction, biographies and novels, are scandalously co-mingling on my shelves.
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THE OFF SEASON: The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped.
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THE OFF SEASON: It’s taken long time to say thanks…
It was with a cup of coffee and a newspaper in my hands a few Mondays ago that I discovered that Mr. Hapenny had died.
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THE OFF SEASON: Lessons learned from the night the ice fell
The picture window of my cabin is sealed in a perfect glaze of ice as I write this, last Thursday morning, and since it faces due north and sees little direct sunlight, I imagine I will be looking through this shower door glass of mine for a few more days. But since I sit and watch the woods much of the time, instead of writing, I suppose the ice is serving a rare good purpose in keeping me on task.
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The Off Season: Pass a ‘midnight dreary’ with The Big Read
It was a pretty poor excuse for an evening one night last week as I lay beside our glowing fireplace, a pillow propped behind my head. I was spending some time with my current read, enjoying each page in the semi-darkness, smug in the knowledge that I’d not be heading to my classroom the next day.
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The Off Season: ‘Too old and too lazy’ to deal with coyotes
Despite the cold and the ever-present winter breezes that blow across our hill these days, I often find myself, even in the blue evenings, standing on the walk near my cabin, looking at the stars or watching for the last red-tailed hawks of the day as they float by in the drafts.
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The Off Season: The passion of having a passion is a great thing
It just occurred to me that I am fortunate to have a passion — a drive to do something that takes me away from the clutches of my job, of home repairs, of the mundane and the ho-hum.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
Nordic Festival Puts North Korea in Spotlight
Greece Passes New Austerity Deal Amid Rioting
'Rumor Has It' Adele's Rolling in the Grammys
Coroner: Houston Autopsy Results Weeks Away
Raw Video: Whitney Houston's Last Performance
Grohl, Grammy Nominees Cut Up on the Red Carpet
Raw Video: Greek Rioting Ahead of Austerity Vote
Raw Video: Child Rescued After Kosovo Avalanche
Reaction to Houston's Death at Clive Davis Party
Pop Music Superstar Whitney Houston Dies at 48
Fuel Removal Under Way on Capsized Italian Ship
Severe Cold Wreaks Havoc in China
Whitney Houston's Church Mourns Her Passing
79 Turtles Seized at Shanghai Airport
Police: Houston Found Dead in Her Hotel Room
Fans 'Speechless' Over Houston's Death
Today in History for Tuesday, February 12th
And the Winner for Best Super Bowl Ad Is...
Stocks Fall Sharply As Greek Deal Is Held Up
Arab League Wants U.N. Help in Syria
Sandusky Can See Grandkids, Have Local Jury
'Bachelor' Free Falls into the Ocean
Apple of their eye at $500 a share
Adele's revealing "60 Minutes" interview
Rosenthal: A's sign Cespedes
Bobby Brown on Houston's Death
Turkey's first face transplant
Exclusive Video: Bobbi Kristina Leaving Hospital
Obama Unveils $3.8 Trillion Budget
Kelly Ripa's Fashion Faux Pas
Lusetich: AT&T Recap
Raw Video: Aurora Borealis As Seen From Space
Grammys 2012: Highlights
2.12: Pebble Beach Pro-Am -- Phil Mickelson
2012 Grammys: Rihanna
2012 Grammys: Taylor Swift
Exclusive Video - Whitney's Bodybag
FUEL TV: Punk Payback Gym tips
