The Little Sparrow
This is a true incident from my childhood, when I was 12 . It was summer. Our examinations were over and we were enjoying our vacations. One day I was playing cricket in the playground near my house. Suddenly I saw an injured sparrow lying on the ground. It seemed that something had hit her. It was bleeding and unconscious. It was opening and closing its eyes slowly. We stopped playing. We all surrounded her. We were sad after seeing her in such a pathetic condition. Nobody was ready to take care of her. Some were giving very lame excuses. I decided to bring it my house. I took my handkerchief and placed the sparrow in it. I didn't even think how my mother would react. My brother, 7 years old, also came to inquire what I was carrying. He asked me about her injuries and what we could do about it? I told that, first we had to save her. He happily accepted and was ready to cooperate with me. Now we had only one mission that was to save the little creature. We were determined to save her at any cost. My mother was shocked to see her pitiable condition. She immediately gave us cotton to clean it and then we applied ointment on its injuries.
Now, the next task was how to feed her. We were thinking what could be given to her as a food. It was first time that I thought about the food habits of a creature. Mother told me not to worry. She said that milk would be ideal for her. We agreed unanimously. It was still unconscious. My mother gave lukewarm milk and we tried to feed it with cotton. We opened its beak and put some drops of milk. Some drops went inside and some just spilled over. After sometime it became conscious. We succeeded in our efforts partially. But it was not able to fly due to the injury. We guessed it would take some days to heal. So we had to keep it in our house. We had to keep it safe from the cat that used to come daily in search of milk and food. We had selected our study to keep the sparrow. We thought it would be safe because of its small size and moreover, there was only one window and a door. We prepared a small and soft cotton bed for it so that it would not get hurt . As I was very curious and anxious for its recovery, I kept watching over it all night.
The next day morning, my brother went to the neighbor’s house to inquire about the food habits of sparrow. He came back joyfully and told me "Bhaiya! I know what it eats". When I asked he replied "fried rice". I was amazed by his answer. My mother and I, both started laughing. He felt very bad and ran away outside the house. I went behind him to bring him back. After sometime I was successful in pacifying him and asked him the reason behind such a funny and foolish answer. Then he told me that he had asked to our neighbor’s son who was studying in 11th standard. My brother considered him as an authority in everything.
After some days it was healed and it flew away. We were very happy and sad too. Happy for its recovery and sad because it had become a part of our family in just 5 days.
I am very thankful to the lord who gave me an opportunity to serve this beautiful little creature.
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