Ties that bind

My parents came by to visit today. The usual stuff happened, they brought stuff for me to take and we went out to dinner to chat. It was a veritable food Christmas this time. But then again it usually is.

This stuff will always hold a very dear place in my heart, aside from the fact that it is the physical, gastronomical manifestation of ambrosia. More on this later.

My parents had some rather unique stories to tell me today, all of them tragic and involving birds. This pair of cardinals had set up a nest in the small tree outside of my parents' bedroom. My dad stumbled upon them one day while trimming said tree and found three little chicks being nursed. Naturally, he left them alone. One afternoon, the two parent cardinals were raising hell so loudly that my parents could hear the ruckus from the living room. They went outside to check what was wrong, and discovered that one of the chicks had fallen out of the nest, and hadn't been able to fly back up. The other two chicks were nowhere to be found; my parents deduced that they were able to fly already and had left home. My mom immediately took pity, and rushed over to pick up the bird to place it back in the tree. No sooner than when she got within three feet of the bird, she collided head on with a hawk that was divebombing the same bird, supposedly to eat it. The hawk retreated, and so did my mom, temporarily, until she realized exactly what was happening. The two parent cardinals flew off to fight the hawk, and my dad chased off our two cats who had apparently wandered in and were ready to pounce too. My mom got a hold of the bird, but realized that the nest was too high to reach. She was too afraid to let the bird fend for itself, but also didn't think it was right to take it in and care for it herself. My parents were at a loss; surely, this bird was doomed. If they let it go, some predator would come and take advantage of it. If they took it in, the parents would give it up as lost and leave, leaving my parents with no way to raise an adolescent cardinal. They reached a compromise that seemed logical at the time. They would leave the chick in a moderately sized cage outside, with holes too small for both the chick itself and other predators to get in or out. Meanwhile the parents would see that the chick was still alive, and could still feed it. My parents went to bed satisfied.

Later that night, at about 4 AM, my parents were woken up by more ruckus outside. The cardinal parents were screaming bloody murder. It was so bad that my mom was too afraid to go outside. My dad went outside, and checked the cage.

A snake had gotten into the cage and had eaten the chick. In a sick twist of irony, the snake was now stuck in the cage because of the lump of the chick in its digestive system. My dad wasn't able to tell my mom what happened until the next day. He promptly threw up and found the nearest weapon to kill the snake with. He's not a violent person, but... something snapped after all they had done to save that bird.

This wasn't the first time something like this had happened either. My parents had installed a bird house prior to this, and a family of mockingbirds had taken up residence. Every day my dad would come home from work and be greated by the birds flying in and out of the house, switching off nursing duties and then to foraging for food. One day he came back and everything was suspiciously still, and he thought the chicks had finally grown up and left. Just to check, though, he went to the bird house to open the door and check inside.

Inside he found a snake within the bird nest with several different sized lumps, apparently taking a nap.

I'm not sure how I would have reacted in such a circumstance. Part of me doesn't even want to think about it. At first I was horrified that my dad killed the snake. After all, things like this happen in nature all the time. But the more I thought about it, it was much more symbolic than anything. The chick wasn't my parents' child by any means... but they took the same kind of concern for it that its actual parents did, and I guess were able to empathize with their situation. I suppose this is what all parents go through when their children are in danger. Ah, yes, such is the quagmire that is the ethics debate, isn't it?

It later occurred to me how memorable these monthly visits from my parents had become. They are now so regular, so expected. The itinerary is always the same, even. We always go to the same hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and we've had the same waitress for three years now, and she goes out of her way to get us seated at one of her tables so she can catch up with us. There's not much to say other than that... but it really does change ones perspective when one realizes that in twenty, thirty years... they'll look back on those times as vivid, fond memories.

So yeah, hence my earlier statement about dim sum, and its role in my history. I wonder if I'll be able to enjoy them as much as I do now when I my parents pass away. For now I'm not going to think about it. It's too unnerving.