My Communion with Baby Birds and a Small Dog

[schlomo]

My Communion with Baby Birds and a Small Dog

At the beginning of my walk yesterday, a swarm of tiny twittering birds with acrobatic panache fluttered beside and above me. They followed me that way for at least a block. I was amazed at and delighted with their playful yet precise choreography and their ecstatic chirping: What an entrancing, exquisite, and inspiring routine! O I guess it was possible that these birds would attack me, but I never feared them; they were hardly predatory like the ones in Alfred Hitchcock’s horror saga The Birds. Just the opposite—they reminded me of the small song birds that so lovingly accompanied Snow White.

As I turned the corner, the baby birds that had rejuvenated me zipped along elsewhere. But at the end of my walk, I had a warm reception from another animal. As I chatted with a partially disabled man whom I occasionally see walking his dog, I noticed that the dog tried to reach out to me. The man slightly let go off his grip on the leash. That gave the dog just enough slack to offer me his paws. I got hold of them and shook them gently. The dog, appreciating my gesture, didn’t let go. In fact, he responded by shaking my hands with the same rhythm. We were in sync for a minute or two until I let go and thanked the man for letting me enjoy his dog’s good will towards me. I then asked him what he had named his dog. He said, “Sunshine.” How appropriate! The warmth of the dog’s greeting me was like a priestly benediction.

My friend Blanche, when she visited my wife and me in Waikiki, invariably joined me on my walks. She would stop to enthusiastically pet every dog that she met. I didn’t want any distractions, so I kept walking in circles until she had finished enjoying her peak moments with the leashed dogs. I wish Blanche could have seen me cavorting with Sunshine. It would make her day as it did mine.