Natural Order

Here is the last photo that I took of the little robins. As you can see, they had grown more feathers and opened their eyes. We made multiple trips to the bathroom window to watch the mother bird feed them and began to notice that she was not so fat as when she was sitting on the eggs. It reminded me a bit of my own first months as a mother, when my son was so frequently at the breast that I sometimes felt he was more of an appendage, albeit a lovely one, than a child. Even so, there is something very satisfying about watching mothers feeding their babies, however they do it. So perhaps, naturally, I felt some connection to this bird, though now I feel a bit silly saying such a thing.
Thomas and Bram and I had been counting the days, wondering how many more it would be before the nestlings wings would be feathered out and strong enough for flight. The view into that nest had become a real source of entertainment, and dare I say it, joy for us. It gave us all a sense that everything was as it should be, at least for this little nest hinged in the shrub branches: for here, for the moment.

Until yesterday. After our walk, Thomas went back to peek at the birds again before he started work. When I heard him cry out, I assumed that the birds had fallen out of their nest. I was prepared to tell him that it was no big deal, that we would just gather them up and put them back in. It isn't true that mother birds will kill their young if humans touch them. But when I got to the window, I saw the snake swallowing the last of three little robins while the mother bird and some cardinals flitted from tree to shrub making distressed peeping noises. Thomas and I are heartbroken for the mother bird. She was so very thin looking from working so hard to be a good mother, and now some awful, heartless creature had just taken all of her nestlings. We both wanted to cry.
It's the natural order of things, I know, and I am one to admonish others in their upset over such things. But this time, we had some of our own emotions invested the welfare of these common little robins, and well, it hurts. It reminds me rather painfully of a former colleague whose daughter, a dear sweet girl, was gunned down in the street a few months before she was to graduate with honors with a pre-med degree. Is that the natural order for humans, too? Am I wrong to expect our natural order to be less fraught with senseless violence? To think that good mothering should be rewarded somehow with the safety of our offspring? We haven't told Bram about the birds. He has such a great fondness for little things. Maybe he will forget about the nest. Or maybe he has already looked and seen it empty and knows the fate of the birds was not a good one. Right now, I am not sure which is sadder.