By José Dominiguez, February 20, 2020 — Last year at the beginning of spring I was taking Sofia, my granddaughter (who is 4 years old) to her school at 8:30 a.m. I was in a hurry because I had to arrive at 9:00. So we initiated our drive walking to the east to 20th street. After walking several steps Sofia suddenly stopped herself. “What happened? Why do you stop?” I told her, “Look Pepe, look on the sidewalk.” And I saw a little bird lying dead, the eyes closed. [The bird was] lying on its back legs crimped, so small that almost was unnoticed, to me, but not to Sofia.
“Come on, let’s hurry!”
“No Pepe, tell me what happened to him?”
“I don’t know perhaps he was very old, or was hit by a car, or had some illness, how am I going to know?”
“But we can not [leave] him there.”
“What? Do you want to take it with you?”
Her face was transformed and in her eyes, I saw the trace of tears.
“No I will not move,” she concluded.
“Ok, let me throw it [in] the garbage,” I replied.
“No Pepe, no I don’t want to!”
“Then what can we do?” Her sad face turned into a very serious gesture and she said:
“My mom told me that flowers grow beautiful when the soil that surrounds them is rich in plant food, and mom told me that when you bury animal corpses in it the soil becomes food for the plants.”
“Meaning what, Sofia?”
“Well, we can take the little birdy into our tree pot near the flowers so they will grow beautiful.“
Solemnly I took the corpse and Sofia helped me to give the little fellow a decent burial. When all was done we continue our trip to school. She was very happy and didn’t stop speaking about the birdy, the possible death causes, how the flowers were to be fed and at one point she stopped and solemnly told me, “You know Pepe, that little bird is going to help also the butterflies because if our flowers become beautiful with birdy they will feed many butterflies. I’m so happy.”