Tuesday - May 25, 2004
Barn Swallows
They're probably a young pair. Lots of others
are in the neighborhood, probably their parents are among them. For the past
few years I've been watching these barn swallows swoop up and down the street,
putting on a show that would put any dog fighter or air show aerobaticist to
shame. Now for the first time a new pair has taken up residence on the eaves
over my garage door. 
This picture is misleading. It was
taken at night but the flash makes it appear to be daytime.
I saw them again the other night. I was leaving
home around 2 in the morning and there they were. Two barn swallows snuggled up
together fast asleep. They have made a sort of home of the flood lights over
the garage door. It's a precarious existence. They have no nest, only a
perch.
Around sunrise, when they're
awakening, if you open the garage door or walk near them, they will swoop and
dart at you, and make little peeping noises, which probably is meant to express
their annoyance at you for disturbing them. Maybe this is intimidating to other
barn swallows or other small animals, but to someone as large as a person, it's
just cute.
I admire these two little
birds facing the world alone. They don't know what they're doing or how
dangerous their new home could be, but they're facing it together. I expect
they will be building a nest
soon.
"We defy augury. There
is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to
come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come
– the readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is't
to leave betimes, let be." –
Shakespeare's Hamlet
Like Hamlet's
sparrow, these swallows know not what their lives, and my garage door will bring
them. Like these swallows, we don't know what our lives will bring us. Hamlet
makes a biblical reference to the sparrow not falling without god willing it,
implying that only god knows while man cannot understand why and
when.
We can try to divine, or augur
what is best in our lives. We can make all the "right" decisions, but still we
can be victims of any fate. The athlete is injured, the Iraqi is imprisoned,
the engineer is laid off. We can plan our life, but we can't control all the
external forces. Hamlet's fatalistic conclusion "let be" is good advice. One
should always try to attain "readiness" by planning and striving for good
results, but in the end we must accept our fate as it comes to us. We can only
play the odds and hope that our plans are
adequate.
The barn swallows have chosen
their new home without being able to comprehend why a garage door opens and
closes. They don't know why their new home may be a poor choice. A swallow
with better insight might conclude that they should move. They don't know what
this new home will bring them, but they know that they are together, facing the
world.
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