In summer mornings, I write the daily news for the portal on the terrace, on the top floor of the building. A light breeze, birds chirping loudly and evenly, a sense of freedom. It all makes me so happy.
One morning, what I feel, someone else felt.
Between seven and nine o'clock I usually call economic analysts on the phone to talk about the gloomy topics of the situation in Serbia - during my years of work I realized that at that time only they are awake and ready to talk.
"You are not in the city, but among some happy beings", suddenly, in the middle of the statement, the otherwise gloomy economic politician asked me. He spoke about the indebtedness of public companies, monotonously and dryly, and, in all this, he could not resist the birds.
He smiled. For the first time in ten years that I have been communicating with him.
It was as if he was beaming and surprised at the possibility that someone was not in a closed office like him, working among birds. He is not a hostile man, but only a statistician who is killed by the sad data that he closely follows - about the real salary, about the reduction of investments, about the increase of the public debt...
Indeed, the chirp is beautiful.
It's only my second working summer on this terrace and I really enjoy it. As I am, I am ashamed of, uninformed about the bird world, I thought I heard sparrows and swallows, because I only recognized them. Actually, I didn't even bother with those bird musicians more than this, even though I went to their concert every day - until one day.
Just as I sat down to write the news before the heat, I was surprised by a song that was not usual.
The sound was intense, slightly uneasy, calling. I look up at the roof, and I see - a bird is hanging! It is held only by part of the body and, incredibly, by the beak. He's calling for help. Apparently it fell out of the nest and fell through some broken part of the roof. He was fighting for his life, he almost fell from the ninth floor, and he still doesn't know how to fly.
I got up, how am I going, what am I going to do? I'm afraid to touch him, I don't even know how. It's bigger than a sparrow, definitely not a crow. What is it? The roof is too high so I have to climb on something and also hang a bit from the terrace.
How do I reach for a screeching bird when there is an abyss below me? I gathered my courage, leaned over and climbed up. There's a gentle breeze, but it feels like the roar of a mow. Nevertheless, I catch the bird and protect it with my shirt.
One way or another, we both landed.
He is black and velvety, he does not resist, but you can see that he is terrified. I won't pet him, but he resents it when I leave, every louder sound causes him stress.
It took me an hour of googling and looking for ChatGPT to figure it out - it's a hoot! The same as those baby chicks that barely survived at the Palace of Albania in Belgrade just a month ago when hundreds of birds and their nests were overshadowed by the political advertising poster "Serbia wins" of the regime party. So the activists saved them for days. The Palace of Albania is their largest residence in Belgrade, but it seems that they don't bypass New Belgrade either.
Hours and hours of calling experts, ecologists, state institutions followed. They can come pick her up in a few days, and until then I have to keep her, look after her, feed her (with live worms), dim her light, never let her out of my sight... I still haven't recovered, and probably never will, from my pet who is no longer with me to enjoy on this beautiful terrace. I haven't recovered from waking up every 15 minutes since my son was born. But the new baby in the house immediately returned everything to the old rhythm.
It was only during those nights that I realized what a danger that poster represented for this weak species. Birds cannot fly away and look for food, they can only wait for someone to bring it to them, and advertising made that impossible.
And my little girl was wailing. Who knows how much she didn't eat before she fell out of the nest and before I found her. And also my lack of bones, so while I secured the worms and figured out how to feed her...
This was followed by feeding with a test tube or tweezers every two or three hours, day and night, never water, because she can suffocate if her mother does not insert it directly into her beak through her food.
My child is sleeping in one room, my new baby is in the other. Until almost every night, the son woke up, and now the bird has taken over the baton.
Those were tired days, in which there is again only room for adults in the bathroom.
On the day when we were supposed to take the čiopa to the "Siniša Stanković" Institute for Biological Research, I was woken up by a chirping sound. The same one I hear every morning as I type on the terrace, which won over even the most gloomy statistician. Only this time he was stronger and didn't come from outside.
Still dreamy, I went over to my bird to see how it was doing. I realized that it was her chirping. I took her in my hands, I was no longer afraid.
