For Tim

I recently read a short essay by Jeffrey Cramer, curator of collections at The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, called The Toad Not Taken. In part, it talks about our willingness, or more often our unwillingness, to help others without first weighing the consequences of what such actions would mean for ourselves. Often when we read something we really like we immediately think of others who would equally appreciate the experience of having read it - and, more importantly, thinking about it. When I read this essay I thought of my buddy Tim who has been away for a while - helping. Tim, this passage reminds me so much of you as a teacher, a parent, and a person. I'm going to share it in hopes that you will enjoy it too.

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There were no cries. There was no noise but the occasionally frantic fluttering of wings. Voiceless, so as not to attract predators, it struggled in the net. How long it had been there, I did no know, but by the way its right leg was completely immobilized by the twisting of the net and some of the netting had entrapped part of its left leg, its wing, and tail, it had to have been there a while.

Our neighbors were away for the weekend, and while Julia and I were outside playing with Kazia, we noticed a bird caught in their downed volleyball net. I went over to take a close look. By the time we found it, it would struggle only when it suspected danger. As I approached, it began a frantic attempt to escape, jumping, flapping one wing, with each useless push away from me only succeeding in further tightening the net's grip.

Slowly I wrapped my hand around it. In my hand it stopped struggling. With one finger Kazia stroked its head. It was one of those brief moments, rarely offered, when she might be able to make contact with, no touch, a free and natural creature. It was not domesticated, it was not caged, and it allowed her, by not struggling or showing fear, to touch it. She touched it, unknowing of the gift offered her, and I knew that it would soon be forgotten in the days to come.

We knew we couldn't untangle the net enough to free it. Do we dare cut our neighbors' net? Would the bird live if we did? Its right leg seemed immobile, perhaps broken. If it had to die, wouldn't it be better to leave it there for our neighbors to find, to teach them what carelessly leaving this net on the ground can do? And if we did leave the bird there to die, plainly in view of our dining room window, what kind of lesson were we teaching our children?

I began to tell her that no matter how hard we might try, we would not be able to get the bird out of the net, that sometimes we can't help no matter how much we want to, that things die. We walked away.

I knew I was calculating the cost of a new net against the life of this bird, the destruction of our neighbors' property, however small and replaceable, with the saving of another kind of neighbor, small and irreplaceable. It seemed hypocritical to give money to save a whale, save a rainforest, save the planet, and not be willing to do something in a more tangible way. I knew I was doing something incalculably wrong by walking away.

At home we called a local department store to find out the price of a new volleyball net. They quoted us $15. Would we pay $15 to save the life of one bird? We didn't even know what kind of bird it was.

We got out the guidebook. A juvenile European starling. A descendant of one, actually of two, of one hundred starlings - sixty one year, followed by another forty the year after - introduced in New York City a century ago. Very adaptive, these immigrants made a strong foothold in North America, increasing more than a millionfold. Considered  pests by some, these birds are here to stay.

I know of a woman who has done much for helping bluebirds, but she does this at the expense of other birds. She has no qualms about destroying a starling's nest because they are interlopers, nonnatives who have taken over the habitat of bluebirds and others. When I heard her calmly tell of destroying these nests to protect her chosen species, I was indignant. Who made her the savior of the bluebird, and what savior has the right to bless with one hand and smite with the other? It was easy for me to ask, "Who did she think she was who could say which species could live and which could die?" Now I had to ask, "Who did we think we were?"

It seems a fact, on that we as a species should be ashamed of, that helping is no longer an instinct, that it is something we must think out and plot the costs and the consequences of. We rarely reach out to help without considering the most far-reaching repercussions. We are unwilling to take responsibility for actions that may not, in the final analysis, bring about the beneficial solution we desired. We have become unwilling to be wrong, and so, in many cases, we have simply become unwilling to respond, period - to other creatures, to other people, to ourselves, to our children.

We went back, scissors in hand. We put twenty dollars in an envelope with an apologetic note and slipped it into our neighbors' mailbox. The starling struggled again as we approached but quickly calmed in my hand. I held it as my wife cut and unwrapped pieces of netting until, with a push of its legs, the starling leapt from my hand and flew away. I longed for some Disney-esque ending in which, free at last, the starling would look back, tilting its head in comprehension, before flying away - some anthropomorphic sense of gratitude. Instead, it disappeared quickly, with a no-nonsense, self-preserving efficiency that in itself was a joy to watch.