She Knows Why the Caged Bird Sings

My friend Anna told me the story of Cruit, the caged bird.
A bird who lived through the shadow of death, temporarily lost his ability to fly, and sang despite his circumstances.
His story never left me.

Cruit was born different. His feet were crooked, twisted and strange, and there were other signs. Mama birds don’t often kick their young out of the nest, but if they do, it is because they are sick or deformed. The mother senses that something is very wrong and the baby will not survive on its own.

Cruit was kicked out of the nest by his mother before his feathers had even formed.

The small bird’s naked, pink body had been pushed from a perch high in a tree. He was expected to die. Miraculously he not only survived, but he somehow willed himself toward a house and was found at a neighbor’s back door. Anna is convinced he knew that he had to get to people to for any chance at life. He had been rejected by his own. She learned of his needs and brought him to the safety of a cage on her back porch. Her home has become a sanctuary. Blue jays and finches, abandoned squirrels, injured roosters or chickens or chipmunks are welcome here. She cares for them in a way I have never witnessed before. Anna treats each one with unique kindness and a deep knowledge of what they need.

It’s heart work.

Cruit’s feet may have been twisted and his fall devastating, but as he grew, his personality was larger than life. He talked incessantly to Anna and other birds, and to himself. His injuries dictated that he remain in an enclosed setting because in the wild other birds recognize “special needs” and kill birds like him. Nobody wants different in their gene pool. He would never be released into the wild and made his home in his cage, released only to the safety of the screened-in porch. Because Cruit lived through the fall, the isolation and injury, he was already a miracle.

But it was molting season that would change him.

Birds molt yearly, losing their feathers a few at a time, the body part that their very life depends on. The process doesn’t happen all at once. Feathers fall out in sections. This allows them to continue to fly, otherwise birds would be in danger. God thinks of everything, huh?
But for Cruit, something in the combination of losing his tail feathers and the twisting of his feet grounded him. The physics were all off during the molting process.  He couldn’t fly for awhile, and the loss of flight made him depressed. Anna would take him out of his cage and place him in different spots in the sun room. But he had lost his voice and the use of his wings.

His molting reminds me of 3 weeks into chemotherapy all those years ago, and how my hair came out in patches. How I’d stand in the shower and tufts would cling between my fingers. And how I’d let them go and watch the brown curls gather in the drain.

There are some seasons of molting that we never forget.

Cruit’s story of being pushed out and falls and twisted legs and being different and molting got me thinking. And what I thought is that if anyone looked like Jesus to him it had to be my friend Anna.

Because Anna knew how to talk life back into the one who believed that the last push really should have killed him. She knew how to create a cage to keep him safe, and how to nurse wounds of rejection. She knew how to continue talking even when the fragile one couldn’t answer, and how to see his beauty through a patchy bunch of useless feathers.

It was Anna that got to hear his voice once again when Cruit’s bald places grew back in and he could soar once more in the safety of her watch.

And Anna knows why the caged bird sings. It’s a song of gratitude.