Memories of Sparrows

Now that spring is in the air, it is the season when we begin seeing many sparrows around town.

Speaking of sparrows, about 20 years ago, the fifth-generation owner once raised a sparrow from a chick at home.

Perhaps they had fallen from their nest, but two sparrow chicks were lying by the roadside just near the restaurant.

They were on a busy pavement, and thinking they would be stepped on if left there, he took them home.

In a sunny room, he made them a bed on the floor with layers of newspaper and tissues, then placed a large, deep plastic basket used for work over it for them to live in.

Having never raised wild sparrow chicks before—and in those days, before he knew to look things up on the internet as we do now—he decided to care for them by trial and error, intending to release them once they could fly.

Since nutrition is especially important for chicks, he first gave them lukewarm water to drink, but one of the two soon died.

The remaining chick drank water and began eating bread soaked in milk, which was a relief.

After that, the days were spent feeding it mainly milk and bread morning, noon, and night.

At times, the fifth-generation owner would go to the park to catch insects and earthworms for it to eat, letting it learn the tastes of the natural world as well.

Then one day, he noticed a sparrow fly up outside the window and peer inside.

He instinctively felt it was the chick's parent, so he brought the basket out onto the balcony to let them meet.

From then on, it came almost every day. Whenever the fifth-generation owner was in the room, such as during his lunch break, he would take the basket outside, place a weight on top, and watch over their meeting to ensure that it would not be attacked by a crow or the like.

We cannot understand the language of sparrows, but they must surely have been talking about something.

It was a heartwarming sight.

Sparrows grow quickly, and before long it could fly. For several days, he would take it out of the basket and let it practice flying around the room.

Once he had confirmed that it could fly strongly and well enough, the day finally came to return it to the wild.

As usual, the parent sparrow came, so that day he placed the chick in the palm of his hand and went out onto the balcony.

Then he said goodbye to the parent, saying, “I’ll leave the rest to you.”

The two immediately flew away together.

He watched them go, feeling both the satisfaction of having raised it safely and a touch of sadness.

There is a postscript to this story. One day, some time after the chick had left the nest, two sparrows came to the balcony.

Of course, it is impossible to identify individual sparrows, but he was sure they were that parent and child.

From then on, they came to visit almost every day.

It may not have been a sparrow’s repayment of kindness, but perhaps the fifth-generation owner’s feelings had reached this parent and child.

They came back in the same way the following year as well, if memory serves.

It is a story from long ago now, but whenever he sees sparrows around town, it still brings back those memories.