Laura Erickson's For the Birds

When I was a little girl, our class once read Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale, The Little Match-Girl. It was the moving tale of a little girl with bare head and naked feet, roaming through city streets trying to sell matches. She started out the day wearing a pair of old slippers that had belonged to her dead mother, but they were too big and one fell off and was lost in the snow. The other was stolen by a taunting bully. She didn’t dare go home because she hadn’t sold a single match, and was more frightened of her father’s promised beating than she was of the frozen night.

To warm her stiff hands, she lit a match and saw in the golden light a lovely warm stove. But then the match went out, so she lit a second match. The light of this one showed her a splendid table with a steaming roast goose stuffed with apples and dried plums. Then this match went out, so she lit another. In the beautiful light of this one, she found herself sitting under a beautiful Christmas tree with sparkling lights that seemed to reach the sky. As this flame went out, she looked into the real sky to see a star fall, leaving a bright streak of light. She remembered her kind grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, who had told her once that whenever a star falls, someone is dying.

She lit another match, and this time saw her grandmother in the lovely flame. She was so scared of losing this vision that she suddenly lit the whole bundle of matches, which glowed with a light brighter and warmer than the noon-day sun. Her grandmother took her into her arms and carried her upwards to a place where there was never cold nor hunger nor pain.

This story popped into my head just before Christmas, when I saw at my feeder a poor squirrel suffering from ringworm or mange, with enormous bare patches exposing its exposed naked skin to the sub-zero temperatures. It was hypothermic when I first saw it, listing to one side, its tail drooping instead of carried proudly above its back to hold in at least a little warmth. It grabbed sunflower seeds blindly, in something of a stupor. It was feeding in the large tray feeder along my dining room window, which was almost empty, so I got a bucket of sunflower seeds and quietly opened the window on the end away from the squirrel, trying to move as quietly and slowly as I could, but the moment the window started to open, the poor thing panicked and took a flying leap out of the feeder into the deep, icy snow. I filled the feeder as quickly as I could, adding some peanuts from the squirrel basket and walnuts from my kitchen, and fortunately no other squirrel showed up until the poor little squirrel came back. It pigged out for at least 20 minutes while I watched, and little by little seemed to feel better, finally even holding its tail in the proper position. But the late afternoon sun was drooping in the sky, and finally the little thing jumped out of the feeder back into the soft deep snow. With every step, snow fell onto the bare skin of its back and sides, and the poor thing twitched spasmodically as it hopped toward the nearest tree. It disappeared into the high branches, out of view of my window.

That night the thermometer plunged well below zero, and the clear sky glittered with stars. I stood on my back porch and saw a falling star, which is when I suddenly remembered the story of the little match-girl. I had a feeling that that poor mangy squirrel would never return to my feeder, but looking up at the sky had a vision of my little squirrel finding itself in a forest thick with acorns and walnuts, safe and warm like the little matchgirl at last.