Want to Rescue a Polar Bear?

From yesterday’s whine about autumn to today’s rant against global warming took about three seconds in this racy brain, which found itself in a doctor’s office reading National Geographic on the shrinking ice cap.

A Swainson’s thrush dashed itself against my sunroom window and broke its neck the other day. I heard the unmistakable thud and went outside immediately, in what I hoped was a rescue operation. It had happened before; I had saved an unconscious hummingbird from the curiosity of my cat and dogs.

This time, the silky olive-brown body was warm, and the bird’s eyes were open: I had hope. I stroked its soft, speckled breast, but its head flopped like a rag doll’s, and its chances looked slim. But hope is hardy and hard to crush, so I wrapped the thrush in a towel and put it safely on the patio, where it could recover and fly away in peace if that should be its fate. And a miracle happened: It didn’t have a broken neck at all! It regained consciousness and flew away.

The accident reminded me of a moment last winter, when I found a cedar waxwing at the foot of the patio door. The waxwing’s body was cold, and there was no hope for recovery. I held it and examined the red waxy points on its wings, caressed its black bandit mask, admired its yellow tail stripe. It was the first time I had a close look at the beautiful birds that come every winter and strip my pyracantha bush of its fat red berries. I can tell you it is much more satisfying to watch the cedar waxwings strip my pyracantha than to hold a dead one in my hand.

I was sorry for my part in its demise; it was my mirror-like door that tricked it into thinking there was sky beyond. It occurs to me there is a link between these birds and the dire future of polar bears: human intervention.

The only polar bear I have ever seen was at the Seattle zoo. In an underground room one could watch the bear swim in its private pool, and I watched in awe as that gorgeous creature stroked past the window.

It won’t be long before two-thirds of the world’s polar bears die off because of the shrinking Arctic ice, said a recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey. By 2050, the bears will have lost more than 42 percent of the range they need to live in.

In just the past few years, the ice has shriveled by more than 350,000 square miles. The 16,000 current polar bears are getting squeezed already.

I want to do my part to rescue those of God’s creatures that are in dire straits. So I read about the small things I can do to reduce global warming. Here’s one: I’m told that if every U.S. family replaced one regular light bulb with a little fluorescent one, we’d eliminate 90 billion pounds of greenhouse gases, the same as taking 7.5 million cars off the road. Maybe it isn’t much, but it’s a beginning. We replaced three. Where there’s life, there’s hope.

Song of the Arctic

The Arctic is screaming,

a scientist said.

The blanket of ice

on top of the earth

is fraying so fast,

some summer soon

the walrus and wolf,

the white bear and seal

will have no ice to wander.

They are not walkers on water.

They are not Christ.

They cannot redeem the world.

They must have their ice.

We read this in the paper

sipping lattes on Sunday:

take note for a moment

like a twinge in a tooth

but it passes we forget

we are a bowling ball

hurtling down the lane

at a bevy of pins

we soon will shatter

and they are living beings

screaming in the Arctic.

Chris Alba © 2009 Photos courtesies: Cedar waxwing Regent Science Class; polar bear on burg AmeNaevra(Norway); resting bear reallynatural.com