REMINISCENCE--The Killdeer and the Carousel
Taking the bus to work last week, I caught sight of a bird scurrying across the parking lot at McHenry County College. I had not seen a bird like that in twenty odd years. In an instant a long forgotten moment emerged in perfect clarity.
It was a late, cool spring day several years ago when my wife, Kathy and I brought our four year old daughter Maureen to the year’s first carnival. A half dozen rides and a string of game booths were set up on a gravel parking lot of then brand new and largely undeveloped Lippold Park.
By the looks of things the Crystal Lake Jaycees that hoped to benefit from the carnival was not going to make much money that Saturday. Low clouds threatened rain and a brisk wind out of the north was stinging. The carnies gamely barked their come-ons and ran their nearly empty rides as a handful of families made their way around the grounds.
Maureen didn’t care about the weather. She was too excited. She ran for the carousel. I hoisted her up on a handsome black steed and stood next to her, arm around her waist to steady her. We were the only ones on the ride. After a few moments the operator gave up waiting for more customers. A bell went off signaling that the ride was about to start.
Something scurrying along the ground caught the corner of my eye just before the carousel began to spin. A small, long legged bird darted out from under the ride and started staggering on an irregular course across the ground.
The carousel lurched forward and calliope music began to blare. Maureen squealed with delight as her pony rose and fell to the music. But I was distracted. On each rotation I could see that crazy bird stumbling across the gravel.
When the ride finally stopped the bird, suddenly recovered from what ever ailed it and darted in a straight line back under the ride. Curious, I lifted Maureen off the horse and we hopped off. Hand in hand we walked to the spot where the bird disappeared. I got down on my knees and then bent my head close to the ground, peering into the darkness. And there, under and just inside the outer rim of the carousel floor, the bird squatted on a rude nest. Aha, I thought, a killdeer!
Now a killdeer is both the most improvident and the most self-sacrificing of birds. Improvident because it builds its crude nest on open ground. In fact the structure hardly could be dignified by the work “nest,” just a few pebbles of gravel pushed together for a rough cradle. Self-sacrificing because in order to protect her eggs the killdeer will lead predators away from the nest by pretending to be wounded and vulnerable on the ground.
I explained all of this to Maureen, who at a tender age had already grown barely tolerant of her dad’s long, boring nature lectures. But she was interested in that bird. We stayed there and watched through three or four cycles of the ride. Each time it was the same. The bell would go off and the bird would scramble from her nest limping across the ground and dragging one wing as if it were broken. When the ride stopped it was back in a beeline to her eggs.
How that nest ever survived the carnival set up, I will never know. How it would fare if the weather cleared and crowds jammed the midway was a cipher. The tear-down Sunday night would be even more dangerous. But one thing was for sure, that killdeer would keep offering herself a sacrifice as long as she could.
I felt a kinship to that bird. The nest I was providing for Maureen and her big sisters was as flimsy and exposed as any ill-conceived pile of stones in a parking lot. And I would gladly throw myself between those girls and any catastrophe. But like the killdeer, my mere bravado might not overcome my improvidence.