Not Even A Sparrow

My mother related to me a rather poignant incident that occurred in Guernsey a couple of weeks ago. She was driving through St Peter Port when the traffic, in both directions, came to an abrupt halt. A mother duck was escorting her large brood of ducklings across a busy main road. Patiently, the motorists allowed her to scurry too and fro collecting the ducklings that were lagging behind. Eventually when the family of ducks were safely gathered together on the other side of the road, a cheer went up from the motorists as queue of traffic as it started flowing again.

My mother’s story is sharp contrast to an event my husband, David, and I witnessed in Eastbourne last week. We were strolling down the seafront road one evening when we saw a seagull trying to cross the busy road. The traffic had halted and a crowd had gathered offering encouragement to the bird. Suddenly a car pulled out of the queue, and passed the halted traffic, quite deliberately speeding up and running the bird over! The shock and disgust was tremendous, I think the motorist would have been lucky to escape lynching if the crowd had caught up with him!

There are thousands of seagulls in Eastbourne so the demise of one of these creatures is not going to endanger the species. On the whole seagulls are a perfect nuisance, squawking loudly day and night, interrupting sleep. They are generous birds, liberally covering parked cars with their airborne load! However, the fact that the untimely and wanton death of this one seagull caused such a reaction from the crowd, showed that in spite of the horrors we see daily on our TV screens, we are not totally inured to violent death, albeit that of a gull!

I find it comforting that not even a sparrow, or in this case a seagull, falls without God observing and caring.