Hard spring lessons

I found an interesting article on spring wildlife young,and the harshness of nature. When I was doing wildlife control, this time of year was especially difficult, because disasterous things did happen to wild babies, and caring humans always wanted to know "can you save them?" Could I somehow stop the heron on the pond from killing ducklings? Could I somehow magically catch that tiny lost duckling peeping forlornly out of reach in the swamp?

Sometimes, with patience and effort, the answer was a miraculous "yes." Sometimes, however, it was a sad "no."

Out in the country, the high-pitched voices of newborns have joined the local coyote pack. Crane flies have hatched in droves as they dependably do every May. One day I surprised a baby owl who’d left the nest but hadn’t yet learned to fly and watched him hobble off to a plum thicket like an old man on a crutch. Across the road, a tom turkey is out from dawn to dusk in the field fanning out his feathers to awe a bunch of hens. At night, a billion frogs serenade the moon with their croaking love songs.

The church I took my 95-year-old mother to on Mother’s Day was crowded with babies lined up to be baptized. The choir sang a poignant anthem in which the creator promised, “Non vos relinquam orphanos” — I will not leave you as orphans. I wondered: Is this the same spirit that watches over geese in ways we can’t understand? Life is driven on. There may no answers to our questions, but we can’t help asking: What is our place in this world? What does it all mean?