Illustration by Molly Zhou
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Sometimes people experience deeper bonds with members of the animal kingdom than they do with other humans. For me, coming home with an unidentified little chick from the beach turned out to be an insightful experience and a long love story.
A childhood by the sea in Spain meant endless days spent at the beach. One warm spring day, my siblings and I found a chick in a rocky area by the water and took it home with us. We thought the little bird would not survive without help. The chick was so young, it was impossible to know what kind of bird or duck it would turn into. It did not have feathers, and it was covered with a fuzzy brown fur. It had webbed feet that were bigger than its body.
When we arrived at the house, the adults in my extended family home were uncertain about letting us keep the bird, which looked unhealthy and most likely would not survive the first night. They were not happy that we had touched the bird and had taken it from the place we found it. They explained that the mother was probably desperately looking for her baby, because when a baby bird falls out of the nest its mother would do anything to keep it alive. We placed the little bird in the chicken coop where it would be safe and away from harm. We named her Cordelia assuming it was a girl and because the name means “daughter of the sea.”
To everyone’s astonishment, the bird survived not only the first night but every night that followed. Within a few days, she grew to triple her size and we were able to tell she was a seagull.
It turned out that Cordelia was a survivor, as well as an eating machine. Finding this fascinating, we handfed her everything we could steal from the kitchen. She loved spaghetti, bread, potatoes and any sugary dessert we found. When she was hungry, Cordelia could be loud and aggressive and the chickens who shared the living space with her were not so happy. On the other hand, it was a lot of fun for us to have her in our lives. We spent hours playing, running around the yard until we were tired as Cordelia followed close behind our feet.
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After the first month, we had to remove Cordelia from the chicken coop because she was getting too big and because we were certain she was eating the eggs. We found a place in the garage for her to spend the nights and she was left free to wander in the yard flapping her wings and being loud during the days. Cordelia was always happy to see us and would run to us, most likely to be fed.
Since she grew quickly, the adults thought Cordelia would soon fly and leave. They told us that seagulls had natural instincts to fly away from the land toward the sea, but Cordelia’s departure was neither fast nor easy.
It took a long time for the bird to learn to fly, probably because of the extra weight she carried with all the daily meals she was getting. Maybe it was because her mother was not around to teach her those basic skills. It was close to the end of the summer but the seagull’s instincts finally kicked in and she was taking short flights and coming back right after.
Her trips eventually started to last longer and longer but to the amusement of all the kids in the house, Cordelia would show up at the end of the day. She would call us to come out to serve her dinner and let her into the garage to spend the night. That was until one day, when the adults told us that our house was not a hotel and Cordelia needed to figure out a way to survive on her own.
The process of separation was painful for us because every time Cordelia would shown up in the yard, we were used to running to meet and feed her. It was like seeing an old friend who came for a visit. But despite our complaining, the garage door was closed at night and the feeding diminished. It wasn’t until the fall when we were back in school that Cordelia slowly became independent and the visits became more and more sporadic.
To this day, more than 45 years after Cordelia left, I think about what she taught me as I raised her: I learned something important about intuition and listening to my inner voice. A seagull who was raised in a chicken coop still knew who she was. Like Cordelia’s, my intuition would take me far and deep into the life I was meant to live. Only when we are brave enough to open our wings can we soar into the unknown.
Sunny Fernandez lives in Toronto.