Blue Jays

When I was a little kid I used to spend a lot of time with my grandparents. They live on the beach in rural Prince Edward Island, a tiny but beautiful corner of Canada. In the summertime I would go outside with my grandfather and we would stand very still with bird seed in our hands.

 

The blue jays learned to love and trust him, and would sit right on his fingertips while they ate the bird seed. They would sit on the tip of his baseball cap, waiting for their turn. Only one bird ever fed straight from my hand. Now ten years have passed, and Parkinson’s has robbed him of that steady hand. Hurricanes and erosion are stealing the shoreline of their property, the ocean eating its way towards their doorstep.

 

Thirty years from now, my grandparents will be gone. Their house erased. And if we chop down all the trees to make room for the data centres to move in, I’ll never get to show my grandkids how to feed a blue jay, right from the palm of your hand.