The hummingbird feeder froze yesterday.

In place of red sugar water, we looked out to cloudy pink sugar ice. It sparkled in the clear cold sunlight. A frozen feeder isn’t really a problem here in November. The summer hummers flew south weeks ago. (Guess we should take down the feeder, huh?)

Oh, but over the summer, our forest plays host to at least a dozen hummingbirds. I fill and refill their feeder just outside the screened porch, and in exchange they grace us with their beauty and the louder-than-you’d-expect hum from their wings. Just like the chatter of tree frogs, the bddddddrrrr of the hummers divebombing each other means summer to me.

Sadly, sometimes I find a small puff of shimmering feathers on the floor of our garage – a dead hummingbird. And I know how it died: It came in looking for the feeder, and couldn’t get out. (With their fast metabolism, hummingbirds have to eat constantly. Otherwise, they quickly weaken and die.)

Our garage traps hummingbirds because it’s really more of a screened-in carport. And since the screened garage is adjacent to our screened porch, its entrance affords a clear view of the hummingbird feeder on the other side. The two screen walls in between are apparently invisible to the birds. So a hummer coming from the driveway often mistakes this for a shortcut and traps itself.

And we’ve learned from experience that once a hummingbird gets in the garage, it CANNOT find its way out again. That’s because it instinctively flies as high as it possibly can, hovering along just beneath the ceiling. Since the exit is about two feet below the ceiling, the hummer never even sees it. It just repeatedly crashes into the screens along the side wall of the garage. Until it weakens and dies.

Or someone rescues it.

***

Just in case you were wondering, hummingbirds aren’t easy to rescue. Besides the “flying along the ceiling” thing, they’re super-fast and skittish. At first I tried to drive trapped birds out, swinging a broom in the air to scare them toward the door. I ended up running around in circles between the trucks. It was clear that I needed another solution.

So I searched the bottomless garage closet of miscellaneous sports, yard, and pet equipment, and I found a pool net.

We don’t have a pool.

But we used to have a blow-up one. Until it blew into the blackberry thicket. And popped.

Those birds are lucky we never get rid of anything.

Anywho, I brought out the pool net, which turned out to be the perfect hummingbird rescue tool. Once I figured out how to gently trap the bird between the net and a screen, I just had to coax it down far enough for me to grab it.

I think this last summer I rescued at least eight hummingbirds.

(Or possibly the same hummingbird eight times…)

Each time, I slid my hand under the pool net and slowly grasped the now-squealing bird. (Did you know hummingbirds squeal when frightened? It’s true.) Once I had the bird cupped in my hands, it would stop moving and crying.

But the hummer’s heartbeat never stopped tapping against my palm like a miniature jackhammer. I gingerly carried it out of the garage and rounded the corner to the back of the house, where no obstruction lay between me and the feeder.

And opening my hands, I rejoiced as the hummingbird zoomed straight up and away.

***

I’ve been thinking recently, does God ever get tired of rescuing me? I never tire of helping hummingbirds, so he must not. After all, if I have enough compassion to rescue a walnut-sized bird, what can I expect from God?

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

Matthew 6:26

Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?

Matthew 7:9