As I traversed the route I always do from my Jeep to the entrance of the office building where I work, I glanced at the now empty nest that lay in the ivy bed under the oak tree. Pin feathers and empty, broken egg shells decorated the area as scavengers had left it somewhat disheveled in their search for any of the ducklings which may not have hatched. The raccoons found nothing in the nest, however, because all of the ducklings had hatched; all except one.
Two weeks ago when I passed the nest at the end of the day I noticed that the mother had taken a rare reprieve and had gone down to the creek for a drink and a dip. It was in that moment that a great conflict arose in me and my good sense battled my selfishness for a moment as I debated taking one of the eggs for myself. I reasoned with myself: “I’ll keep the egg warm, faithfully and carefully incubating and turning it as its mother was! I’ll be mother and caregiver to the little duckling once it hatches! My children will love it, I’ve been wanting a pet, and it would be a wonderful experience for all of us for a long time to come!” Compelling arguments to a man who suddenly and impulsively set his heart on something. Ah, but the voice of reason could not be silenced, and it gently but firmly reminded me of a time many years ago when I had been faced with a similar choice and learned a difficult lesson from it. Allow me to elucidate.
It was a humid summer evening in San Antonio. I was living in a small, humble house in a part of town not known for its high income demographic. The sun had already gone down and I was just arriving home from the grocery store. As I approached the front door, there on the screen was a cicada, still dirty from having only just emerged from its earthy cocoon. It had apparently made its way directly to our front door and climbed up the screen to find a safe place in which to go through the final molt of its life. In my life I had seen thousands of empty cicada shells stuck to the sides of trees, to car tires…nearly everywhere. I had also found adult cicadas that had newly emerged from their subterranean exoskeletons and were drying their wings. But, I had never witnessed the entire process of their emergence, and so I gathered my kids and we all sat down on the front porch to watch this miracle transpire before our eyes.
Thirty minutes passed, and the cicada had managed to split the skin on its back and was partially protruding, its eyes still inside the brown skeleton. By this time, the excitement I had imparted to my children had waned and they went back inside. I, however, being the patient and curious adult that I am, decided I was going to stick it out and watch this beautiful emerald creature complete its molt. An hour passed, and the cicada was almost totally out of its skin with only the tip of its abdomen and the ends of its legs still inside. My curiosity got the better of me at that point, and I approached in order to study it closer and (and this is where the real lesson began) to assist it in its escape. As I “gently” and “carefully” (as much as a man’s giant fingers can do) plucked the cicada from the screen and began to lend it the aid of my human strength to pull free, one then two of its still very soft and delicate legs broke off. I immediately ceased all of my efforts and hooked the cicada’s empty front claws back onto the screen door, backing away from it with an overwhelming feeling of horror inside of me at what I had inadvertently done.
I never forgot that incident, and now as I pondered the question of taking one of the duck eggs home, the feelings of that moment there in the porch light came flooding back to me, transforming itself into an echo of the conscience that told me in no uncertain terms to keep walking toward my Jeep. My selfishness and vain confidence, however, won out and in a moment I was walking to my Jeep, a very warm duck egg held against my fatherly chest.
It took the entire ride home to quiet my conscience and re-convince myself that I could certainly succeed at this endeavor. I took a flannel blanket and formed a nest on the floor beside my bed, placed the egg in the center, and covered it over. I then placed a heating pad on top of the nest on its lowest setting to simulate the mother duck and began monitoring the temperature inside the “nest”. Having researched the subject on the net, I knew that the internal temp should ideally be 98 degrees, and I did pretty good at maintaining just that. The hiccup came, however, when it was time for me to take my three day trip to Missouri with my children to visit relatives, something I had known about but not thought about during the deliberation to take the egg. So, I employed the services of two young ladies I know who volunteered to house sit for me. I showed them how to monitor the temperature, how to turn the egg, and took the time to impart a sense of urgency to them about the matter. When I left, I had all confidence that Huey, as the unborn duckling came to be known, would be fine. Well, in all honesty I didn’t have all confidence…there was a nagging worry in the back of my mind that I worked hard to quiet since I had no choice in this situation but to leave Huey in their care.
When I got back in town, I immediately asked about the egg and how things had gone, and was informed that the temperature had dropped and they couldn’t get it to go up. I candled the egg to check for movement inside and saw a shadow moving around, so I thought all must be well. I thanked them for taking care of things and proceeded to get the nest’s temperature back to optimum. Every day that followed, I candled the egg and saw no movement. My heart began to sink as the possibility that Huey was dead grew. Since I passed by the nest every day on my way in to the office, I knew that all of Huey’s brothers and sisters had hatched two days prior, but I hoped that perhaps due to the lowered temperature, Huey was just a bit behind in development. Not the case. Three days later and still no movement, I decided to extract Huey from the egg in case he was just too weak to get out himself. I found a perfectly formed little duckling inside, folded up in an amazing pattern that allowed his entire body to fit into the space of an egg, but completely lifeless. Huey had died, and once again that old sense of horror flooded in as I considered the life I had, in all of my best intentions, taken.
What compels us, as human beings, to harbor such vain thoughts as to believe that we can do everything better than nature itself? Sometimes, we view a scene and judge it through eyes clouded with the pride of life, telling ourselves that nature is “just getting lucky” and that it would do much better with our intelligent assistance. What we find, though, is a lesson in humility as we are reminded, sometimes via dark consequences, that we are, alongside these creatures great and small, the Creation and NOT the Creator. As such, we have no right nor ability to do nature one better and to even consider such a notion is vanity and deceit. The lesson then, that I have now had to learn in at least two separate, life-effecting sessions is this: nature is here for our viewing pleasure, and in all our observations and partaking of it, we ought to always leave it just the way we found it.