Playing the Wounded Bird

        a cautionary tale

by Nancy Harris McLelland

Before you play the wounded bird

consider the charadrius vociferus

commonly known as the killdeer.

Because she builds her nest in shortgrass fields 

and sometimes parking lots, nature compensates

with a behavior called injury feigning.

She attempts to protect her fledglings

by making a strident and piping sound

as she hops on the ground,

and flaps a fake broken wing

hoping to fool the cunning coyote

with her plaintive over here, over here.

As I walk down a country road

and harken to her cry,

I reply, “I am not your enemy.”  

Driven by fear and destined by nature 

ever to be the wounded bird,

she’s incapable of making that distinction.

And you? Must you persist in acting the one with a broken wing

hoping to lure the one who needs most to mend a broken thing?

* * * * *

For Nancy Harris McLelland, home means Nevada. She divides her time between Carson City, the capitol, and Tuscarora, an almost ghost town in the ranching country fifty miles north of Elko. She publishes on her blog, Writing from Space—Memoir, Essays, and Poetry from the Wide, Open Spaces of Northeastern Nevada, www.writingfromspace.com, and is also accessible through her Facebook page Tuscarora Writers Retreats.