Nala's Flight of Birds

When Alex, my first rabbit love died, I was disconsolate. But even in my grief, I noticed an odd thing happening. I don't think I imagined it: I was visited by an inordinate number of dragonflies. They were all over the place: getting caught in the house, bonking into me on the street, hovering in front of me in the garden. I started to jokingly think to myself that Alex had come back as a dragonfly, and was telling all his buddies to visit me and thank me for loving him so much.

When our beloved Gryphon the MIghty died, this strange phenomenon happened again--except this time was butterflies. Gryphon crossed over in October, which is not peak butterfly season, even in Miami. But they were everywhere. Even normally skeptical Kevin noticed it. Heliconius. Swallowtails. Sulfurs. Painted Ladies. Monarchs. Dozens of them appearing suddenly where none had been before. I don't think we were simply noticing them because of Gryphon. We were not looking for them. It was simply too big NOT to notice. Bazillions of butterflies in autumn!

When Duncan passed, I didn't notice anything unusual. He was our quiet boy, after all: Gryphon's accolyte, gone to join his beloved Hero and Only Love.

But when Nala died...the strangest thing started to happen. BIRDS. I would never have connected birds with Nala, but as our wise friend Tam pointed out, Nala had loved to sit on the windowsill, gazing skyward for hours. Nala might well have been a "creature of the air."
We laid her to rest under the little oak tree that is mate to the one where her father sleeps. On that day, I saw more species of birds at our house than I've ever seen at once. The first was an immature male Cardinal. We don't see them often, but he appeared on the day Nala left us, and has been there ever since. There were the usual Mourning Doves, Bluejays, Mockingbirds and Grackles...but also a little GreenBack Heron on the pond, Purple Martins squealing and wheeling overhead, an unidentified brown bird I've never seen before.
Then, at the end of her memorial day, the most magnificent of all our birds --a Swallow-Tailed Kite. If you've never seen one, you have missed perhaps the most spectacular of all birds of prey. Its body is radiantly white, except for its primaries, secondaries and long, forked tailfeathers, which are irridescent, satiny black. The angular raptor soared and circled over our house for the better part of ten minutes as the setting sun bathed the sky in a thousand hues of orange, red and gold.

Okay. I could buy all that as coincidence. Our house is very "bird friendly," and there are usually plenty of them about. But what I cannot buy as coincidence is...the Flight of Mockingbirds.

As you may know, Mimus polyglottos is one of the most territorial little grouches of the bird world. One rarely sees more than two in a given area, since they fight off conspecifics ferociously. They tend to drive away other birds and even big mammals when they're nesting. (You haven't lived 'til you've been dive-bombed and konked on the head by a protective parent mockingbird.)
So imagine my surprise when on the Sunday morning after Nala died, I walked out to her grave and was startled by the roaring rise of no fewer than THIRTY mockingbirds. They were everywhere. Four trees border Nala's resting place, and there were mockingbirds in every one of them. They bounded up and flew higher when I came near, but then started swooping from tree to tree to roof. Little dogfights ensued, and a good bit of quarreling--but they all stayed nearby. Two of them are now in the process of building a nest in Nala's tree.
They were still there on Monday. And later in the week, I watched from the window as they swooped around, playing/quarrelling/dogfighting for about 20 minutes. They were still there when I left. At least thirty of them. No lie.
Still later, while I watched from the window, one of them (I am NOT making this up) flew down and sat facing Nala's headstone (a coral stone with the silhouette of a head-bowed rabbit), fluffed himself/herself up several times and picked at the verbenas I had planted there. He stayed there for at least five minutes, just resting, seeming to visit the grave.
While that one kept Nala company, another one flew up the hill from her grave and alighted under a tiny, stick-like shrub I had just planted. She spread her wings and lay down, tail pointed skyward, and sunned herself. All the while, at least 15 other mockingbirds flew spot-winged patterns around Nala's tree. Nonstop.
There is not another concentration of mockingbirds like this anywhere nearby. I have never even seen such a concentration of mockingbirds in my life. Ever.
I don't know what happened exactly, but it felt like a gift from Nala--or from the Goddess herself, telling me that our Valiant One is free. Is she to be reborn into that nest in her tree? We'll never know for sure.
The strange occurence gave me a very strange feeling, but peaceful. Death is not the enemy. Suffering is the enemy. And Nala no longer faces that enemy. Her spirit is as free as the air that lifts the birds around her and sends them whirling into the sky.

The Flight of Birds was a gift. A reminder that we are all connected and part of the Great Dance.
Souls who are so close in life can never really be parted. She will always live in our hearts, and as the branches of her tree rise with the years, she will live in them, too. We're a family, after all.