Birdslaughter

Yesterday I witnessed a gruesome murder. Our neighbor Scrubby the Scrub jay, whom we’ve always enjoyed the company of, revealed his most violent side. As I pulled up on my bike I saw him holding down a fledgling mockingbird and attacking him. I steered toward him and he picked the poor little thing up and tried to fly away, only to drop it on a driveway occupied by a gang of small children (my neighborhoods version of the little rascals). When everyone was alerted that a bird was bleeding on the driveway calls came out of the gang’s house that any child who touched a bird would die of rabies. I came over, picked up the little bird and carried it home, promising that I would try to nurse it back to health or take it to the local bird hospital.
As I carried inside it quickly became clear that Scrubby would soon be guilty of birdslaughter and therefore banished from my backyard (only when I was out there of course.) The little fledgling had a pierced skull and was fighting for every breath. Lying in my hands for less than two minutes, it breathed its last breath.
Now I’ve always felt a justified sense of injustice when an animal lies dead on the side of the road. They just want to find food or a mate and “Wham!” their days are ended by our transportation machines. Or the poor cows crammed together waiting to become fast food burgers. How greedy we are for beef. There are plenty of ways I could list that humans over do their mistreatment of God’s animals. However, having always been taught about the balance of nature, I did not expect to feel angry at the scrub jay for killing a fledgling, anymore than I expected to react in anguish and frustration at the discovery of a decapitated sea lion on the lost coast, apparently the victim of a shark. After all, don’t they keep each other from overpopulation?
Don’t get me wrong, I love the study of ecology and I’m very grateful for the balance that keeps us from being overrun by rats and allows for such a variety of species to coexist. But it is all so violent and bloody. Surely there is a better way!
Roman’s 8:22 says that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth. Doesn’t nature groan and cry out to her Creator because she is kept in check by violence and bloodshed? I realize that the natural world functions quite gruesomely since Adam and Eve first disobeyed God, but there is hope for all creation.
Revelation reminds us that all things will be made new and Isaiah speaks of that time like this:

“The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra
and the young child put his hand into the vipers nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”


Of course what I worry about more is what vile and evil predator the gang of children may come to meet when they are fledglings. They are some of the most at risk children I know and I must pray for them daily and remember that though they are not my own children they are God’s children and he would not want their souls murdered, but rather wants his other children to show them who He is and guard them from the enemy who wishes to tear them apart.