I came out of church a little late one Sunday. Almost everyone had gone home. The parking lot was deserted except for a little cluster of cars with people outside them standing over to the side. All the people were gathered around looking at something intently.
I went over to see what was going on, of course. They said there was a bird who had laid an egg in the middle of the gravel lot.
I looked, and sure enough, the fat brown bird was standing there with an egg between its feet. This is in an open field fill of gravel and sand that is used for extra church parking.
Like, this is where you choose to lay an egg? Why, bird?
One of the onlookers found a couple of traffic cones and set them up to try to help make a barrier around the bird, which it disliked intensely. If you approached the bird it would become extremely agitated , flapping and squawking.
Obviously this thing was determined that it and its egg belonged right there in the church parking lot. The group of people were wondering what to do.
I said, “Do you want me to call my daughter?” (That’s ET; she has just finished vet school.)
Everyone thought that as a good idea, so I face-timed her to show her the bird in question.
ET said, “Oh, that’s how those birds are. They just lay eggs anywhere they want. We had one at the barn that laid an egg right in front of the horse stalls at the barn. We had to carefully lead the horses around it for a while.”
I asked her what we should do, and she said to leave the bird alone.
So everyone got into their cars and left, satisfied that an expert had told them it was okay not to stand guard over a bird who didn’t know that this was possibly the worst place to lay an egg. (Besides in front of a horse stall, I guess.).
I don’t know what happened; the bird wasn’t there the next Sunday. Maybe she moved the egg after the threatening people had gone. In any case, I was glad to have saved several well-meaning people from standing in an empty gravel lot all afternoon feeling confused.
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