Birds

Today on the way to work, I noticed a family of birds in the road. There were, what looked like, two adult birds and three baby birds. They were slowly walking in front of my truck as I was trying to get to work. I waited for a while, but the babies just continued to walk in front of me. I could see the two adult birds very agitated and running around calling and trying to direct the babies. The babies seemed oblivious to the danger and just continued to stroll back and forth in front of me. I stopped the truck and got out. What I noticed then was the mother bird acted like she had a broken wing.  When I got close to her, she got up and acted fine. I carefully shooed the baby birds across the road, but continued to notice that the closer I got to her birds, the more the mother acted like she had a broken wing.

I came to work and looked up the bird and found out that it is a killdeer plover bird and they are known for the “broken wing act” that distracts predators away from their nests and babies.

It made me stop and think how much parents love their children and how, in a second, we would trade places if we could. We try to lure the enemy away from our children. We do everything in our power to call to the children and try to keep the predator away. But eventually, we learn that the children have to choose for themselves and we can’t distract the adversary that has a focus on them. We need to teach them how to get away from the enemy and get back to the nest.  The "broken wing act" doesn't deceive the predator, it just wears us out.