Fatal Death of a Bird from a Crash Against Glass Window

We were surfing on the web facing Murchison glass windows when we heard a thud and something fell down. My first reaction was someone (one of my friends) threw a ball or some soft material at us just as a prank. But when we got up and saw, it was a bird that had crashed against the window.

I had not seen a bird crash against the window with my own eyes. We got out to see if we can help the bird. I went near and tried to move the bird but saw that it had broken its neck. A viscous liquid was oozing out, it was not blood. We realized the bird had broken its neck pretty bad and there was no way we could help it. If we moved its neck, it would have popped open. The bird crashed at the glass window with a significant amount of force. I had not realized that reaction force against a flying bird could be so large. The crash had made a pretty loud sound. Sadly, the bird died in less than 5 minutes from its initial crash. The damage done was irreparable.

In the image below, if you see closely you can see the liquid oozing out of the bird's neck.

A Bird after crashing against the glass window. Photo by: Digital Subway

From the image below, you can estimate the reaction force the bird must have felt.  Liquid oozed out immediately.

Glass window after a bird crash. Photo by: Digital Subway

After this incident, Sawan and I, two fellow engineers realized that the research to prevent birds from crashing against glass windows is very necessary. More birds die annually from crashing against glass windows than from flying planes or rotating wind turbines. Fortunately, a team of engineers including Brian Williams led by Dr. Jack Leifer is working this summer at Trinity University to prevent flying birds from crashing against glass windows. From my understanding, a mechanism is set up to detect flying birds which activates another system that repels them by some sort of sound unpleasant to birds or some other mechanism that I am unaware of.

I feel sorry for the bird. Wish there was more I could have done.

Bird after crash against Glass Window. Photo by: Digital Subway

A Death in the Family

Lightning didn’t strike me but I know even if it would have, it could not have been worse. I guess I will start rambling on after few sentences so, I am warning you ahead. I received a call from my home and the news delivered was distressing. I do not call home often, usually they call me. I am trying to live in this little isolated world of my own, divorced from all worldly bonds and emotional attachments. Every call from home creates a little hole to peek in my little isolated world. It’s not that I hate my parents or family. They are the only people I love and they mean to me more than anyone else. This is a normal behavior of an adolescent I guess, normal since I am growing amid an American society.

Life and death are the two biggest mysteries that haunt every human minds, even more so thinking, active and intelligent minds. The only death that I have seen closely is the death of my grandfather. It was an unusual death in many ways, ways that I do not intend to mention here. I was only 14 years old then and the concept of death was alien to me even though I knew that being dead means not being able to find that person on this Earth or in this universe. I was very close to my grandfather and I was his favorite among all cousins that I grew up with, in my large family in my village. It has hardly been 6 years since I lost my grandfather and the pain has not healed yet and it seems I am going to lose my grandmother now. It’s unfair.

Can’t they wait? Death should give me sometime so that I can overcome the pain of losing my grandfather and those childhood days that I spent in his arms listening to folklores. It should give my grandmother sometime so that I can finish my college degree and go back home to see her. The tears in her eyes when I left for the United States have stamped an indelible image in my mind. I vividly remember her words, “You are going so far from me. I do not know if I will ever see you again before I die.” Even though she said these words in a serious tone, I knew this was just an intended humor. Her words have turned true, what an irony. I wish they had not.

My father did not hide anything; he explicitly said, “She is in her last stages. She is confined to bed now and cannot move at all. It seems she will not live for long. Do you have any of her photos?” As a grown-up adolescent, I know about this process of life and death, unlike Siddartha Gautam(Lord Buddha). But my incomprehensibility and inability to understand this process or to reason why this is inevitable is no different than Siddartha Gautam. When someone dies in one’s family, all the knowledge, understanding, rationality and pragmatism goes on a holiday trip to Bahamas, all it matters is that the person, whom they loved so much and who loved them so much would be no more in this world. No one can do without shedding tears.

Jaundice. That is what put her into this situation. This word will become associated with fear and hatred for me throughout my life. I know throughout my college degree and beyond, whenever I will come across this word, I will wage a war against it. I will try to learn everything about it with every opportunity, all its weakness and I will humiliate it. I might not be able to kill it but I will defeat it and will make sure it never invades me or my family in the future. Jaundice is a curable disease if treated properly and in a timely manner, if not, it brings death. Her jaundice was not caused due to contaminated fluid or food; it was due to degeneration of her liver aggravated by her diabetes. Diabetes runs in my family and so does high blood pressure. She was further afflicted by gastrointestinal complications. She moved with a diseased body afflicted by diabetes, high blood pressure and gastrointestinal diseases. Such a lethal combination will bring any mortal down sooner than one can imagine. She battled successfully these years, thanks to her healthy diet and traditional lifestyle in a serene, natural and rural environment.

Living amid strangers, all I can do now is reminisce my childhood days spent with my grandmother and wait for the final call from home. With every trrriinnnnggg now, my heart will skip a beat. The tears have started welling, it’s such a pain I have no one to share my grief with.