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This is hard to write.  It's all a little too close to home - literally and figuratively.  

Last Friday night, Bruno mentioned that he hadn't seen Bella, our bird friend who nested on our porch behind the porch light, all evening.  I kind of shrugged it off and chalked it up to timing.  Perhaps he just had missed her whenever he was outside.  After all, even though she was in her nest the majority of the time, there were short periods of time that she would get out throughout the day.  

The next day, Saturday, He said he still hadn't seen her during the morning hours and was concerned.  He held his phone up to take a picture of the inside of the nest, as this is the only way we could see inside.  My heart broke, and I actually couldn't believe it when he showed me the picture.  The nest was empty.  No eggs.  Gone.  Bella's baby eggs had fallen prey to something, and Bella had fled her nest because of it.

Bruno had said that he saw her on Friday morning having it out with a crow in the tree in our front yard (a short distance in front of the nest).  I think he feels a bad in that perhaps if he would've tried to get the crow away, this may not have happened.  Of course it could have been something else that got them, but we are suspecting it was that crow.  Bruno did find an egg shell near our car.  Bruno couldn't have known what would happen, and even if he'd have chased the crow away, it may have come back, or something else could have gotten them. 

The disappearance of Bella's eggs hit hard.  I had thought the location of her nest was such a clever one.  I thought that she was such a dutiful mommy-to-be in how invested in keeping her babies warm she was.  I thought it was such a miracle that Bella chose our house out of all the ones on our street, and that she had laid her beautiful blue eggs in there - life!  I thought we'd have 4 cute little baby robins hatched with the next week or two, and that I'd share their picture.  But all it took was one predator to sweep in and destroy them - to destroy all of Bella's hard work.

The truth of the matter is that the location of Bella's nest was indeed a clever one.  Bella absolutely was an amazingly dutiful mommy-to-be.  It was a miracle that she chose our house and laid those eggs.  All of those things were true.  But what is also so unfortunately true is how cruel nature can be.  Nature can be a real....insert unfriendly Share word that rhymes with ITCH here.  It's the "circle of life", I know.  These things happen every day, I know.  But this was too close to home.  Bella did everything she could have done to protect her babies just as we did all that we could to protect our babies.  And yet, they could not be saved, just as many of ours couldn't be saved.  We can do everything exactly right without one mis-step, and BOOM, in an instant it all unravels.  A very very harsh reality.

The next day, Sunday - Mother's Day, Bruno took the nest down.  We didn't quite know what to do with it, but Bruno said that we could just throw it away.  I couldn't bring myself to do that - it didn't feel right, so I took it out back to the creek behind our house and just left it there - giving it back to nature.  When we took Bella's nest down, we could really see up close just how amazing it is.  It's hard to really appreciate it just from the picture here, but it's just incredible.  It's thick and has these amazing mud supports in the corners.  She build a beautiful, strong nest.  It's just so sad.  

Marco - our little spring gift from you is now gone.  It is yet another reminder of just how precious and fragile life is.  Thank you for sending her our way, even though the time was cut too short.  It's all such a mystery.  We love you, son.