The Last Cardinal

Sometimes I think I should stop loading my birdfeeders with seed every day. Mostly I just attract house sparrows and pigeons, two kinds of birds regarded as “nuisance species.” In fact, there’s a big sign posted near the entrance to the local pet store, telling what section of the penal code you are breaking if you feed pigeons. So I’m breaking the law every time I let the pigeons get the bulk of the seed I put out.

Then too, I read recently that the vast majority of birds don’t eat seed. Most birds eat insects. I’d never thought of that before. Most of those insectivores naturally migrate south in the winter. So nine out of ten birds don’t really need me anyway.

But then whenever I think I’ll stop feeding the birds, my regular family of cardinals shows up – and I feel I should load the feeder - one more time, every time. Occasionally some rarer bird will show up too. Lately, I’ve been getting a red-headed woodpecker working away at whatever peanut butter suet I put out there. But it’s the cardinals that really keep me going. They are such a startling splash of color against the white shroud of snow. And all the neighbors comment on the brilliant fluttering of the cardinals in my yard. I wouldn’t want to let the neighbors down.

The cardinals sometimes feed during the day, but mostly they’re notable for being the first ones out at dawn, and the last ones eating at dusk. I’m seldom up at dawn, but I usually am around at dusk, and I make a sort of ritual of going to the window to see “the last cardinal of dusk.” There’s one more dazzling flash of color before the night closes in.

But standing at the window, looking for that last late feeder, I’m reminded of other lasts. I almost never knew they were lasts at the time. There was the last horse-drawn wagon going down my alley. I’d always run out to see the horsie – but then, around 1960, I realized I hadn’t seen a horse in a long time. And there never was a horse clomping past my gate again. All the ragmen, all the salvage men had switched to trucks.

Then of course there is always that “last rose of summer” made famous in song. Every year, after the first frost of winter has hit, there’s always that one flower in the garden that manages to temporarily escape, by hiding under some weeds or by huddling close to a wall.

There was the last time I took my dog Schnoodle for a walk along the lakefront. I could see she wasn’t enjoying her walks much anymore. Her hip was hurting her. So for a few weeks, I didn’t take her on any more walks. I just let her out into the yard and stood by to help her in over the stoop again. And then she died. The last time can only ever be seen in retrospect.

There was the last time my mother said, “I love you.” That was in a message she left on our answering machine. I was just taking the garbage out when she called from the hospital and, not reaching me, left the message on the answering machine. She went into anaphylactic shock sometime in the middle of that night and was intubated. With that tube down her throat, she couldn’t talk any more. While I sat besides her in her hospital room through the following weeks, she would occasionally scribble a request on a notepad. But the doctors never succeeded in weaning her from “the tube,” so she never spoke again.

Which brings me back to each evening’s last cardinal. If there’s a good portion of sunflower seed mixed in the birdseed I put out, either the male or female cardinal might stay over the boundary between dusk and night for a few moments, gorging on the birdseed. Then my yard light will reflect off of it, making its red glow into an eerie, iridescent fuchsia.

As I stand looking at the last cardinal of the evening, I often think how one evening, it will be the last cardinal forever. It’s not that the cardinals won’t be there anymore. It’s that I won’t be there.