Territory

Oh, the world today. Strife and discontent everywhere you look. What, I sometimes wonder, what is it deep down that causes this sort of thing? What is fundamental to all this savage aggression?

By way of a possible answer, I present the story of the Finch at Barrington Corner.

A little earlier in the year, as I walked to or from work, I passed a certain corner on Barrington Avenue here in West Los Angeles. And one day, with my iPod playing away, I felt a peculiar bumping sensation on my right arm, as if someone was trying to tap my arm. I looked over, saw nothing, and continued my walk. A moment later I felt it again; and noticed a driver in her car, staring in amazement; and then looked on the ground and saw my shadow with something small flitting around it. Whipping around, I saw the finch retreat to its perch atop a guy wire. "Now that was bizarre," I said to myself, and continued on home. The finch did not follow.

(By the way, I'm assuming it was a finch. I know next to nothing about birding, and my cursory examination of a field guide suggests that a finch is the closest thing, but I could easily be wrong.)

Several days later, it happened again, in exactly the same spot. When I turned, the finch retreated and stared; if I again turned away from the finch, it would attack again. Then a few weeks passed, and suddenly the finch was defending the opposite side of the street, head-butting me in the arm over and over again until I was out of its territory. One morning I saw a yard worker dancing on the sidewalk, trying to figure out what on earth kept poking him. "That," I thought, "is one relentless bird." Soon I got to the point where I could spot the finch, perched on that guywire, looking out for trouble; and sure enough, as soon as I passed, the flitting and the head-butting would begin, and would keep on until I rounded the corner.

Of course it's absurd; and of course the bird doesn't know it. It (probably a she defending a nest that I've never been able to spot) cannot know that I have no intention whatsoever of disturbing her nest; she only knows that something large has entered her territory, and that's enough. No matter that I'm much, much larger, that her entire body would fit in my hand, that I intend no harm: she will attack in the only manner available to her, until I leave. Period.

Time passes and I haven't seen the finch for a few weeks; I sorta miss that crazy bird, now. But it strikes me that there's something illustrative in the way that bird will defend her territory against all reason. Think of Jerusalem, for instance, as a nesting territory, and try to imagine: how will you convince these birds not to attack? What logic can possibly accomplish the task when set against an instinct that strong?

Yeah, I don't know either.