“I didn’t tell him why I was inquiring, that I was intent on understanding my family’s investment in resource extraction that was destroying so much land and water and wildlife.”
Susan Cerulean, a naturalist, attempts to use her father’s failing body and mind as a metaphor for the earth’s deterioration due to human consumption and abuse. She depicts her father transforming from a man who had vitality and an intellectual, protective, and fun-loving spirit to one who gradually loses control over his language and bodily functions but never loses his essence. She also uses the title as a metaphor for her father being birdlike, as in the informal dictionary definition: a person of a specified kind or character. Her father is a pretty tough old bird.
One of the themes that will stay with me after reading this book is how the author discussed the concept of aging—humans aging and the earth aging—with and without undue interference. Through anecdotes about growing up with her father and relating to her father as an adult, she showed aging as the natural process nature intended. She emphasized the critical care and nurturing required for the human body and the Earth. She talks about the loss of life signaled with each new condominium complex and strip mall. She says, “A quarter-acre of swamp traded for a dollar store. Forty acres of pine woods buried under a Walmart. A hip fractured on asphalt. What am I here for if I can’t save or protect a single place or thing? Or Person?”
The pages of the book are replete with her admiration and love for her father. The author describes her love for her father growing deeper and maturing even though she struggles with his having worked for The International Nickel Company. This company contributed to the “resource extraction that was destroying so much land and water and wildlife.” Cerulean chooses her words carefully and creates interesting prose when she admits that she didn’t mean to make her father a scapegoat in her writing in defense of the natural world. When she outlined human abuses to nature and her father’s complicity, it is disclosed as another family secret. She quotes Deena Metzger as having said, “A person can be wonderfully good, generous, kind, and still operate within the cultural machinery that destroys the Earth.” Her use of this quote is a somewhat detached acceptance of her father’s worth despite her disagreement with his chosen career’s role in destroying the land that she is expending her energy preventing.
Cerulean speaks of Disney and other Florida theme parks as a detriment to the state’s natural wonders, which she enjoys so much more. She also talks about objectifying her father’s relationship with and condition to study him the way she studies birds. Her expertise as a writer did not completely convince me of the metaphor of the earth as a bird’s nest for human beings. For the most part, I found her writing style to focus on anecdotal reflections rather than building a cohesive story. She conveyed a passion for birds and their habitats and a desire to protect Florida’s wildlife. She also imparted a genuine concern for her father’s well-being and the caretakers with whom she entrusted his life. She did not have the same optimism or confidence in the humans who are caretakers of the earth.
