It's a matter of trust

The baby in the nest was so cute. It peeped out and waited patiently for its parents to return with food (the white crest on its head says it is a cliff swallow). I took the pictures last week. Then yesterday, one of the sets of three cliff swallow nests had fallen to the floor of the barn, crumbled into unrecognizable chunks. The only signs left were the circles on the ceiling and little babies scurrying for shelter under some large round bales.

Those nests had been so beautiful but the heat came, the clay dried, the metal flexed, the nests popped loose. The babies had feathers; they might survive. Maybe the parents will hear them on the ground and still feed them-- just long enough. Maybe.

That barn is supposed to have hay bales stored there-- 60 thousand pound bales arriving this week-end for the winter feed. Rain comes on Tuesday. The cattle need to have that feed without mold. Can a rancher reasonably factor in a few baby birds?

The crumbled nests and the babies struggling to survive seemed to go together with something else I have been wrestling with this week-- the issue of trust. The nests were a disappointment, a symbol of something crumbling when it wasn't built on solid ground. We do that sometimes when we trust the wrong people.

Is it better to be a person who trusts or one who is skeptical? The baby birds had no choice in it. They were born from parents who did the best they could with where they situated them. Many birds have nests around the barns and they are still there, still providing a safe haven. The swallows followed their instincts; except this time, it didn't work. Will they build again in the same place, use those rings to attach new nests, or will they move on?

Basically I am a trusting person. If you tell me something about yourself, I will believe you until something gives me reason to quit believing. Perhaps this has been because the people close to me have been mostly trustworthy. I grew up with parents who didn't lie. I am not naive though and do realize it's not always that way.

Some years back, when I frequented a certain 50s chat room, there was a man who said he was a hunchback. The people who chatted there had no reason to disbelieve him. Why would anyone say such a thing if it was not true? Because of his misshapen body, he told me he avoided going out in the daytime for fear of being abused by others. Perhaps he wanted sympathy, and he got it-- falsely. Someone who eventually met him said he wasn't handicapped other than obviously emotionally.

Internet makes lies easy, but it happens in 'real time' also. Years ago, a friend of mine was dying of cancer. During one of her bad spells, I sat at her bedside to comfort her, got her water to drink, tried to think of things to say that would be helpful. Someone else who was less gullible and knew more about cancer realized she was lying which the woman finally admitted to all her friends and the church that had mostly been believing her lies. I don't know why she lied, maybe a sickness of a different sort, a need for attention. I also don't know why I never thought to disbelieve her.

On the swallows, we will get involved in the nest problem by nailing up a couple of wooden nest boxes and some shelving below the existing mud nests. None of that will help the little ones that fell to the earth too soon. If they aren't fed by their parents while on the ground, if they can't survive long enough to learn to fly, they are doomed.

We can feel the same way when we find someone important to us has betrayed our trust. Do we try to build again in the same place? Do we move on?

We, as humans, are both the babies and the parents. We wait for what others bring us needing to trust. We are also the ones who bring nourishment to others and they need to be able to trust us.

(The nest is one of several in the equipment shed. The pair on the line are most likely their parents-- Brewer's Blackbirds.)