I think about birds sometimes and where all the nests are. My friend says most of the birds live in tree holes drilled by woodpeckers or carved by bugs or left gaping after a dead branch falls. But surely so many hundreds of birds can't all live in holes? My guess is, those nests we see in our yards or at forest edges are just a ruse, Spring rentals for those who drew the short straws this year, to make us think they live among us. I believe there is some secret, other place the rest gather, hidden from human eyes, and predators, of course where they can tuck themselves safely in at night and emerge, ready for the big jest, each dawn.
I wonder also about mice. There must be so many mice but we never see them, unless our basements have holes or if we have a cat. Whence, for example, came the little gray mouse I saw in the parking lot at CVS one winter night, just at the kerb, as I emerged from my car, bent on acquiring some much-needed personal care product? How far had he come, to hug the rough cement step in the shadows, invisible to all but me?
I stood perfectly still then and delicately pulled out my phone to call a fellow mouse-lover. While I was leaving a message the sleek little fellow emerged from his nook and trundled right up between my shoes. All under my disbelieving eyes he leaned right against my heel and commenced cleaning his face. One hardly thinks of a mouse as casual but, clearly, here was one at ease in his backyard and assured of his place in some nearby burrow safe from enemies and cold and, probably, filled with a tidy stash of nuts and seeds and granola dropped by careless, overfed teens on their way to some popular hang.
I wonder, too, then, about moments of clarity. Where do they go, once I've glimpsed them perched briefly on a branch in the tangled woods of my mind? Where does the straight bit of path go that, in a moment, is overrun with brambles? Has it holed up somewhere or is it just there, in the shadow of a kerb, perhaps near my car? Or are those moments of insight just red herrings for the real seat of truth and understanding that dwells farther in where I can almost hear the sweet, terrible cacophony of many foreign voices, piping?
