WENDY RATAWA
They say I’m an ordinary Australian garden sparrow but I know I am more. I may be tiny, but I am feisty and fly where my cousins don’t dare to roam. This is my adventure last Sunday.
My cousins and I mainly live in a melaleuca tree in the cemetery, where we hop about. We can’t walk like a heron although we fly as high as a phone tower, but not in the same league as the gigantic eagle.
Well, the other day I ventured into a church as the door was open. In the chapel I was attracted by a coloured window with a bird in it, then a bright lantern and a white box up in the ceiling to sit on. Big humans came into the chapel and there was music and talking.
I really got frightened when I saw a large black eagle but then I realised it was only a picture on the wall. As a man praised eagles soaring into the sky, I showed off, flitting from corner to corner in the ceiling. Look! I can fly too.
When the people said the Lord’s Prayer, I chirruped as loud as I could then stopped with the Amen.
When I saw bread on a table I was tempted to dive down and take some until I realised that this was serious business for the people in the church, so I refrained.
Then it was over. The people left, except for one young girl who decided it was time I left too. She had a small black box in her hand which she fiddled with. Suddenly I heard my cousins calling me with twitters, so I followed the young girl out the chapel double doors, through the narthex and into the sunshine. There were no sparrows there at all! The girl had tricked me. Something to do with her little black box. An iPhone I heard a person say.
(There was a sparrow in the East Geelong Uniting Church and Ebony, a teenage girl, helped it escape after our morning worship service. Rev Peter Greenwood was preaching about eagles so I was intrigued by the comparison of the little bird inside the church – Wendy Ratawa)
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