The chirping noise was coming from Girl's mouth. Girl is my neighbor's completely likeable dog. Her tail is wagging because she really, really likes me. I bring her food and pet her and talk to her in a voice so high it breaks glass, and she likes all of those things. She apparently also likes to carry around nearly dead hummingbirds. I presume the cat struck the first blow, and Girl was just finishing the job. It's like waterboarding with copious amounts of dog saliva.

It takes me a few minutes to get her to give up the bird, which at that point looks like a wet piece of crap. Its poor little tongue is hanging out of its mouth, and its heart is beating so hard that its body heaves up and down in my palm.

I know what I'm supposed to do at this point is put the bird down and crush it quickly under my shoe. Aren't we supposed to put things out of their misery when they get hurt? In the past I would have taken this as a test of inner strength, and the job would have been done quickly and without guilt. Today, somehow, I can't do it.

What if the bird actually survives? I don't know what it takes to kill a hummingbird. Perhaps this just scared the shit out of him, and when he dries off in a couple of hours, he'll laugh about it with his friends.

I'm pretty sure this bird is not going to survive. His eyes are half open, and he's looking at me like he doesn't know who I am. Well, we've never met, but I mean he doesn't seem to care that a human is carrying him around.

I don't know what to do with him. I put him up on an outdoor shelf, but I can tell the cat is going to just jump up there and do more evil the minute I turn my back. So I carry the bird across the street, straight into the territory of MacGruber.

MacGruber is my cat. He's one of the biggest cats I've ever come across, and he loves me way more than Girl does. When I say MacGruber loves me, I'm not talking about the pure, innocent affection between animals and their humans. I'm talking about a dirty, carnal love that I'm sure (based on some completely innocent Google searches) can be viewed for a certain sum of money. Calm down. This is unrequited love. Sure, I love MacGruber, but it icks me out to no end when he starts hitting on me. Let's just say that when I first discovered him on the property, I stared really hard in his general area and could not determine his gender. Nowadays, he's gives me a certain clue to his gender on a regular basis. It's embarrassing, really.

MacGruber is going to find this bird and think I brought him a present. I'm not really sure where to put him where he will be safe from my cat AND my kids, so I find a quiet place in the garage.

I know when an animal is in pain you're not supposed to let it suffer. Some people even think that humans should not be allowed to suffer. Lots of people, including some people in my family, are Plug Pullers. They swear up and down that if it comes to "that" then they don't want to live in limbo. "Pull the plug!" they bravely say. That's what we're supposed to say.

Believe me, Plug Pulling Relative. If you really want to die quickly, you do not want to put me in charge. I will find the most subtle shade of gray in any situation.

My imagination is running wild with this bird. I think the bird would like some time to reflect on his life. Maybe there's a special someone he would like to think about as he flits into the light. Maybe he wants to think about their children or his favorite feeder or the hurting he put on that other hummingbird right before the cat took him down. I don't particularly want the bottom of my shoe to be the last thing he sees. I imagine him screaming "NO NO NOT YET! ONE MORE MINUTE!" I just can't do it.

And then there's the risk that I do the job badly and instead of putting the thing out of its mercy, I make it suffer even worse. Oh I can't do that. I will fuck this up.

I close the door to the garage and go about my business. My husband is appalled that I won't kill the bird, and he keeps asking me what I'm going to do.

Listen. I don't want the plug pulled. There's no use hurrying things. You people don't know as much as you think you do about who is ready to die and when. So back off my plug.

When my dad was dying, he stopped eating. He said he wanted to die. We all believed him. At the time that he said it, I'm sure he meant it. But after a couple of weeks, he changed his mind. He really couldn't do much but lay in his hospital bed and watch TV, but he still wasn't ready to go. I'm glad no one helped him when he asked for it. I know a lot of people repeat the same old stories over and over again, and after a while, the visits you share seem like a sitcom in syndication. My dad wasn't like that. He was full of surprises. He had stories he told me at the end that I never knew. Couldn't even have imagined. So him changing his mind meant we all got a few more months of him.

An hour later, the bird is dead. Stiff as a board. I am pretty sure he preferred to die on his own terms in a quiet place, although it smelled pretty bad seeing as how it was just above the place where I dump the cat poop. Sorry about that, bird. I'm also sorry that I flung your body out into the bushes instead of actually burying it. We all know that the things we do after someone passes are more for the living than the deceased, and I'm both an atheist and a composter.

My dad was an atheist too. But my grandmother is a glove-and-hat wearing Methodist, so we had some crazy fire and brimstone kind of service that wasn't at all what I had in mind when I pictured my dad's funeral. And I pictured it a lot during the seven and a half years that he was sick. The casket was open, although only my mother wanted that. I understand why she did it. She was outraged on some level. "Look at what happened to him?!" I imagined is what she was saying. He didn't look himself at all.

Neither did that bird. Hummingbirds, so quick and graceful. This one all wet, feathers clumped together, looking like he was just hatched.