Hummingbird Friends

This past weekend, I linked arms with two fun friends as we joined the throngs of browsing shoppers and antique dealers who migrate to Warrenton and Round Top, Texas each year.

My backyard garden already overflows with rustic treasures, so I didn’t expect to return home with any more, but I did.

Though not an antique, these three cast-iron hummingbird hooks hooked my attention. Soon they’ll provide a perch for the nectar-filled feeders on my back porch, but to me, they’ll always remind me of the weekend the three of us spent together, buzzing through fields filled with rusted Coca-Cola signs and chubby concrete angels and antique surveying instruments, laughing as we circumvented the porta potties and discovered a bathroom we had to use in the dark, and playing like girlfriends do, regardless of how much older we are now than when we donned our gold Tigerette uniforms and red lipstick and high-kicked our way across Tully Stadium 40 years ago. Now, I look at my weekend purchase and smile, thanking God for the treasure of sweet friends.  

A few weeks ago, a lone hummingbird, unintentionally lured by the red garage handle hanging from the ceiling, flew into my sister’s garage where it seemed unable to go back to the yellow roses and the purple lantana beckoning it to return. Disoriented and confused, the tiny bird, whose wings flapped faster than I could blink, hovered and twittered and swished from one side of the garage to the other, but could not escape from its prison.

Hummingbirds spend the winter in Central America or Mexico, and this bird’s migration was in peril. He was one stuck bird.  

I tried everything I could think of – swooshing him with a straw broom, scooping him in the swimming pool net, luring him with sugar water on top of the truck, talking to him in that syrupy, high-pitched voice that works with many animals, and even calling friends for other suggestions; but nothing worked.  

Unable to help, I finally went to sleep.

But the next morning, the bird was still there, valiantly flapping and fluttering from side to side, although much more slowly than before.

I was amazed at his resiliency and saddened at his inability to escape the accidental confinement.

I found out later that garage doors must have the red emergency release handle, which, unfortunately, looks like a red trumpet flower, a favorite hummingbird attraction. And when the whimsical birds dart in to check it out, they get disoriented and frightened, so they instinctively fly up and stay there, trapped in the garage where many die.   

I was exhausted watching the tiny bird’s efforts, and I kept hoping and praying he would escape.  

And then it got worse! Another hummingbird had joined him in his plight!  

I think I felt as helpless although not as exhausted as the two of them did.  

Retreating inside and googling for a solution, I pondered the possibility of using a leaf blower, but as I stepped outside yet one more time, the birds were gone! Both of them! I’ve never closed a garage door so fast in my life! Not again, not on my watch anyway!

But then I got it -- that epiphany that comes from God who is always watching and teaching and helping us become more Christ-like each day.

The bird had been stuck for 18 miserable hours; it took a friend less than an hour to help him get out of his rut.

One seemingly insignificant bird helped his tiny buddy out of a big ole’ jam.

Just one friend.

With our words somersaulting over each other’s, the three of us had chattered and laughed and visited as we flitted from one side of Round Top to the other. Lurking in darkened bathrooms, haggling with dealers over brass potty plungers, and swooping in when we saw a particular rustic treasure, we enjoyed each other's company. We once shared a life of dance and boys and school, and one day we will share a future beyond our imagination, but for now God has given us a present -- the Godly gift of friendship.  

God sends us into the lives of others. We matter.

Thank you, Lord, for the help you send us through the gift of friendships.  Help us never to take our friends for granted and to be a friend who “loveth at all times” (Proverbs 17:17a KJV). Amen.