How to Catch A Hummingbird

Saturday morning, the 15th of September, turned out to be an interesting morning. We are on call all weekend, being responsible for the residents checking in each morning to make sure they are all OK. Last evening, while on call, the hospital called to say that one of our residents who has been there for almost two weeks, had passed away. We had not had the opportunity to meet this gentleman since he went into the hospital the evening after we started work at the Care Center.
Linda let me sleep in a little longer and she went to the center to open up this morning, one of the duties you do if you’re on call. I went over about 8:30 to get some breakfast and help her with the check-in. Upon entering the front hallway, I noticed the doors midway to the front, were closed and the lights were out. Odd, Linda knew that we needed to open these and turn the lights on. As I came further up the hallway, I also noticed that the lights in the dining room were out. Perhaps they were having a memorial service already for the resident….would seem too early in the day and most don’t come to breakfast. When I entered the dining room, I saw what the center of their attention was. Flying around the dining room was a hummingbird. Linda said she wasn’t sure how it got in but nothing they had tried had been successful at getting it to leave.
For the next hour we tried everything from holding up full size sheet trays to try and shoo it to an open doorway to “herding it” by groups of people waving their arms. It flitted along, just below the ceiling tiles, and never seemed interested in going towards the outside daylight in the doorways. I came to our rig and got a fitted sheet and two of us put it over broom handles and held it close to the ceiling to make a net of sorts to try and give us more coverage for “escorting” this little, but oh too fast bird out of the room. With the obstruction of residents sitting around in a 40’ x 52’ room, watching grown people chase after this hummingbird, it must have been quite an attraction. At one point, Judy (another volunteer), gathered everything red she could find and sat perfectly still holding these “red” objects. She had a flower in one hand, a hummingbird feeder in her other hand, an open jar of maraschino cherries on a table next to her, an open “red” umbrella at her feet and a red pillow also on the table. She looked like the sitting Statute of Liberty, adorned in red. “Give me your tired and flitting birds….” But that hummingbird would have nothing to do with any of it. After all the humans in the room were worn out by chasing from one end of the room to the other after this scared little bird, we stopped. And guess what….that little hummingbird went to one of the ceiling vents and came to rest. He sat there…..and probably due to pure exhaustion, he stayed there long enough for us to take a dust mop and trap him in it. I was afraid that we had killed him but when we took him outside and shook that dust mop, out he flew.
I wonder….did our resident’s spirit, who passed away the evening before, return on the back of that hummingbird for one last goodbye…To fly around amongst his friends before going home….