A Tortured Conscience

If there’s one thing that’s hard to admit, especially for a man, it’s the wail of a guilty conscience. Mine hollered loudly today. It happened on my back door steps.

I’m sitting out there, having coffee, watching the birds have a feeding frenzy on the two feeders. There’s a reason I have these feeding stations…I have a wicked conscience.

I’d like to blame this deep sense of remorse on my daughter, who’s the reason the feeders are here in the first place. A guilty conscience is good at assigning blame. But I know better. I’m the criminal, convicted and sentenced to a life of haunting mental torture. I once murdered a bird. I was nine years old.

It was a brown thrasher. Its neck was hung up in some chicken wire in the shrubs. Being the Good Samaritan I was taught to be, I attempted to alleviate its plight. I guess I applied a little too much force and came out with a headless body, warm, quivering, with blood trickling down my fingers. Its head had that calm look of death. I buried them together.

And that’s when my conscience was punctured. So, here I am now, the appalling penitent looking for mercy, trying to balance the scales with acts of mercy. It’s not working well.

Small children have tender feelings before life calcifies them. Such devastating deeds as I committed have lingering effects on their psyche. As the child’s adult monster emerges, it takes some hard-core incidents to crack a conscience.

The larger feeder hangs on a dead limb in a skeleton of a tree. The tree has few leaves at the top and a lot of dead branches below. Being fond of metaphors, it reminds me of myself…enough of life left to breathe but not very useful for much more, except, perhaps, for feeding birds.

The big feeder has a platform that tilts when the squirrels attempt to pilfer seeds. Watching the little thieves tumble is entertaining. They soon learn and join the mice, and an occasional rat, foraging below for left-overs. Nature has its ways…nothing is wasted.

Beneath is the bird bath and drinking fountain. Overhead we’ve installed a mister, which at this rate is bound to double my water bill. The little birds soak and preen. Like children, they’re not afraid to try something new. We’re doing all we can to keep the little creatures happy. No seed is too expensive for the sake of my birds, and for the assuaging of my conscience. Money will purchase all kinds of Indulgences!

What’s interesting about the birds is how they all seem to co-exist. There is, so to speak, a ‘pecking’ order. The finches, chickadees, doves and cardinals share the perches. The jays are bullies. They swoop in like kamikazes and the feeder empties. The black birds gang up on the jays. The woodpecker is the big bubba on the block. Like a king, he dines alone, gloating while the others complain and wait their turn.

I’m the bird’s benefactor. I’m sure of it. Sort of, anyway. It helps me to mitigate the smoldering sensitivity of that tragic event with the thrasher. But somehow I don’t think the spirit of that poor thrasher feels justly compensated. His relatives continue to celebrate at his expense after the funeral by reaping the rewards of my repentance.

A strange thing happened last Fall. The birds vanished. All of them. Disappeared. Totally. I was confused. Where were they? Were the seeds bad? I washed the feeders, bought new seeds. Still no birds. Contrition gnawed my conscience like a bone. About two months later they suddenly returned, just like before, like nothing happened. Which brings me to a convenient place to conclude this current self-flagellation.

Eventually the past shows back up, often disguised as the future. It checks in to see if we’re doing what really matters, and if we’re holding up our end of the grand bargain life requires.

Today it showed up on my back steps. It found me doing a small part. But not the brown thrashers. They continue to boycott our yard. Old grievances die hard. A tender conscience is a terrible thing to waste…..

Bud Hearn
June 27, 2013