The bird in the terminal

Last week, while I was sitting in the Denver airport waiting to board my plane, I saw a strange thing. A small bird -- it might have been some kind of finch -- had somehow gotten caught in the terminal. I guess it had been there a while, because it wasn't doing what wild birds usually do when they're trapped inside a human space; it wasn't dashing itself against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the terminal in a vain attempt to escape. Rather, it was calmly flying from rafter to rafter, hopping about on the carpeted floor, and occasionally alighting on a windowsill and just staring outside.

At the time it struck me as both whimsical and sad that a bird would be stuck inside an airport. Whimsical because, in a place with all the ten-ton trappings and million-dollar machinery required to allow humans to "fly," here was this little bird effortlessly flitting around under its own power. But it took a little more introspection to nail down why I found it so sad.

Human beings have always regarded birds as symbols of limitless freedom because they can fly; this is suggested in the idioms "free as a bird" and "flying high." We have long envied birds for their freedom, which is why we developed airplanes in the first place. We don't expect to see wild birds inside human dwellings, precisely because they are wild and they can go wherever they please. This bird, though, was trapped -- unable to find its way out to the open air where it belonged.

I have since discovered that there are many birds in the Denver airport. I wonder how many of them have bred, and whether the little bird I saw had ever spread its wings in anything other than a climate-controlled terminal. Based on its relative lack of fear around humans and the way it wasn't attempting to fly out the windows, I'd guess there's a good chance it had never been outside. This little bird didn't have to worry about harsh weather, predatory animals, or the chaotic movements of jets outside the terminal. It was in no danger of starving as long as there were open trash bins or compassionate passengers around. It had wings and it could fly. But it wasn't free.

I wonder what the ultimate fate of that little bird will be. Will it manage to escape out an open jetway and learn to live in the open, with all its attendant dangers -- or will it stay inside where everything is safe and comfortable, and eventually die without ever knowing what it's like to soar?