How Ruining My Favorite Glove Was the Best Part of My Day
Athletes. Friends. Mi amigos! ! I miss you guys. I hope all of you are all taking time for yourself, walking outside, and staying positive. I want to share a story where I was able to accomplish all three.This week, my wife and I were walking along a serene, heavily treed multipurpose trail at Academy Park.The trail lies south of Big Walnut Creek and just 4-5 feet off the trail, amid the dense brush, was a gorgeous male cardinal standing on the ground. His red was striking against all the various shades of brown.“Krissy, look a cardinal!” and I kept walking.Krissy, paused for a second, “He looks injured?”Having graduated as a Worthington Cardinal and being all the more proud of Ohio everyday, I decided it would be the only time in my life to get a ‘close-up’ of our State Bird.Just like every other experience in our 24 years, she was right. He was not doing well..I wriggled through the leaves and branches and see the cardinal furiously flapping his wings to get away. He’s not going anywhere.
My first few thoughts, ‘Oh, great.’ We’re out here trying to be positive and relax and now it appears we’re “lucky” enough to come across this beautiful creature with almost certainly a broken wing that will likely soon succumb to the forces of nature. Isn’t April 2020, fantastic?
As I got close, there was a very fine transparent fishing line wrapped 60-80 times around a branch and this cardinal’s foot was 100% entangled and it was not going to separate. We had nothing at all sharp on us. To try and free him, I had to hold him in my glove which the poor thing continued to bite at (see picture) for about 45-60 seconds. At one point he finally stopped, in my mind it’s because he realized we were working together. I’m not sure how it happened, but after one of the many seemingly futile ‘untwists’, I heard leaves rustling and I looked up to see a spectacular flash of red quickly flying through the trees and now 15 feet away from me over the creek.VICTORY!! Oh my goodness, It felt so liberating!Hopefully, now you can understand why I’m so happy when I look at this destroyed glove.And hopefully all of you are ‘freeing your own cardinals’ at home and I very much look forward to the time we can be together again.David
Krissy, the team, and I think about you often and I welcome any updates/questions/conversations by hitting reply to this email (it will come to me).