cardinal

The doors were open today and a cardinal flew in. Perhaps he did not know how to exit because he kept throwing himself into the glass of the windows facing the woods of the backyard. I opened the doors wider and left for a bit. It was late in the afternoon, the air mild, but the sun was bright. When I returned, he was still in the room near the windowsills and on my arrival, tried to escape again the hard way - through the glass. I opened a third door that was near him, and walked up, thinking he'd fly outdoors as I moved toward him, but no. After a little fluttering along the sills, he let me pick him up. I lightly held him, he weighed very little, but he struggled nonetheless and I lost him once. I held him more securely as we went through the doorway and he bit me hard with his beak, three times, on the fingers. His eyes were lit up with anger, gleaming black against the red of his feathers. He would not release his hold. He was staring right at me. I felt a kind of elation to be holding a cardinal at all, but abashed that he'd clamp down so fiercely on the fingers of his rescuer. This whole situation lasted only a minute or two. Once outside, I opened my hands and he flew into the woods.

My evening changed its course. As though I'd been furiously scolded for some error on my part, I left the house to celebrate the equinox elsewhere.