Only Humans Allowed

A few years ago, during summer time, we decided to go enjoy the beautiful weather at the beach.

We used to live in West Harlem at the time (my wife, my son and I), so we took the train downtown. At the second train station (an elevated station at 125 St.) many people were waiting for the train. As they got onto the train in a rush, a tiny bird flew in so fast that it didn’t have a chance to avoid a lady’s big hair and landed straight onto her massive wig.

The big hair lady went into full panic mode and began screaming and yelling. Initially, no one gave attention to her loud screaming. (This is New York after all.)

The tiny bird managed to untangle itself out of the jungle of hair and flew away looking for the big blue sky (I’m assuming), but there was nothing around except silver walls. Little bird was trapped inside the subway car.

More people noticed the small object with feathers moving in a frantic way all over the place. They began reacting in the same way they do when a fly is bugging them.

Some one tried to smash the tiny bird, and right then, a domino effect was triggered. Every single person on the front of the subway car was doing the best to smack down the unwanted passenger.

My heart started pounding very hard while watching the little bird avoiding every attempt.

I wanted to yell loudly, “Stop!”
A few seconds passed and I wondered if the crowd would understand my request, and more importantly, if they would give up their intention of killing the tiny bird.

As the tiny bird made its way to escape to a safer place, it flew in front of us. In a blink of an eye, I caught it with my right hand. It was scared to death but I held it safe and sound.

My wife finally noticed the tiny bird in my hand and asked me, “How did you do that???”
I told her, “I don’t know. I just did.”

We came out of the train station at Union Square, and I released the tiny bird into the park.

My son was so fascinated with the little bird and as we let it go.
He said, “Bye-bye little bird! Be careful!”

As we were standing in the park, suddenly, I got a drop of bird poo on my shoulder.
I figure that was a way for the bird to say, “Thank you.”