Little sparrows

A Story by Chitra

I shifted into a new house with my parents. It was a first floor house with a nice verandah and a terrace. After all the unpacking of things, we settled in a few days. Soon I realized that we were not the only occupants of that place; there was a couple too, a pair of sparrows.

The sparrow couple perched at ventilator of the wall, and were planning to reside at the ventilator. There early morning chirping would wake me too. The early risers, at day break would start there tedious and unfruitful task of collecting straws and cotton fiber, soft feathers and yarn small twigs. This went on for several days and weeks . Everything they tried to place at the ventilator would fall off but sparrows never left hope. They continued with there activity till the end of day.

Finally I came upon a solution. I cut a hole in a card box, decorated it with some colors and mounted it on the ventilator. Somehow managed to fix it firmly by means of a wire to the ventilator. The sparrows were in a turmoil to see things at the ventilator, they kept chirping, flying around, like someone had intruded into their territory. Later, to the joy of the pair, they had a pretty apartment for themselves, hesitant at first; but hopped into the box one by one to explore the whole new residence.

They got the stuff again, everyday, but now it was in the box . Soon they had their nest all ready for the new arrival, The process began, hatching, then feeding the little ones continuously with great fresh insect food.

The pair would unhesitantly demand the freshly kneaded dough and feed the little ones. It was a pleasure to observe their efforts to fed the little ones, tirelessly. It was a wonderful sight to see the chicks peep out of the hole pushing each other and chirping away tirelessly. The chicks grew fast and looked very healthy with fluffy feathers, small pink beak, and cute bead like bright innocent eyes. it was a magnificent event of mom and dad giving lessons to their chicks to fly. They would chirp in a typical twitter or a sound, to lure the chicks to come out and try out their first fly. Ultimately they did . One by one all the three cute chicks were out of their warm and cosy nest, perched on a near by tree branch. They were off. The nest lay barren, and all the fun seemed to have ended.

I decided to clean up all the mess, brought down the box and cleaned it up. Then replaced it with another card box a new one for another breeding. Few weeks later they were there again. The previous chicks having fully grown and flown off. The parent sparrows continued with their next mission. It went on for seven years, until one day male sparrow was not located, it did turn not up. Next day the female had another male to befriend her , but soon after that the female disappeared too, putting an end to the life cycle of breeding chicks. Now no more sparrows in my house, missed them, there was no chirping as before, no one to demand for the dough. Soon I was announced by my parents that we were to shift to another state, just as my sparrow left I was soon packing up and leaving with memories of sparrows, I learnt a lot from them, which is not yet added to this article.