Accidental Bathers

Many people despise advertising on the television but I don't. Admittedly I too get riled if the same block of ads runs repetitively during a program or if there is a lot of screaming but my entertainment from ad watching comes from pondering the nature of the ad campaign. Who is the ad aimed at? What 'cheese' are they using to lure the audience in? Why do I think I'm immune to what they're selling? How would I handle the ad campaign to get the product into the lives of the consumers? I find it all very fascinating.

In this vein I think that the provincial government's ongoing ad campaign aimed at the general public in an effort to reduce the number of preventable accidents, is an interesting one. The product they're selling is safety and the benefits are reduced medical costs and fewer deaths. One of the ads, the one that ends with 'no one wakes up thinking that they are going to drown today' caught my attention. The statement suggests that something dire or critically important is being shared, but what is it? How is one to act after hearing the words? Is it implying that if a person simply thought of the possibility of drowning today, they might still be alive at the end of the day? It doesn't say that but my mind made the leap to that conclusion. Or is it saying that anyone could drown today even those who don't think they will drown today? The statement, I concluded, really said nothing and I suppose that is the art of an ad. Sound serious, stir anxiety, but when scrutinized the ad company and advertisers are guilty of nothing but fuzzy logic. Ads run. Ad men get paid. Effects of the campaign are unknown. No harm, no foul. Still, the bit about drowning served to remind me of a few unsafe things that have happened to birds in the yard.

Both events involved drownings and took place in water receptacles that I put out. The first incident happened while I was house-sitting. I returned to my dwelling and replenished the first and most popular of the water dishes. Aware that we were going through a mini-drought, I also put water into a deep plastic container that looks like a giant dog dish. I fitted the popular bowl with a piece of wire that acts as a perch that leads into the water and allows birds to enter and leave the water in relative security. The big dog dish had no such device. Since I'd only ever seen birds like Robins and Gray Jays in the big bowl I thought no self-respecting small bird would enter such deep and treacherous water. It was safe or so I thought. I was wrong.

When I returned a few days later I found a small Flycatcher floating dead in the big dog dish container. Having witnessed Flycatchers bathing before I knew that their bathing style involved flying directly into the water and back out again without stopping. The drowned Flycatcher had probably tried this and either through plain bad luck or lack of oily feather due to it being a young bird, it flew in and got caught in the water.

The second bird drowning took place in another water container in the yard. I routinely catch rainwater from the gutter in several large cooking pots on the front steps. From these I water the flowers and unless it has just rained the containers are in various states of fullness. I was about to dip a jug into the biggest pot when I saw a drowned Sapsucker floating in the water. No doubt it had tried to reach down into the container to get a drink and lost its footing. Once in the water there would be no way of getting back out unless it could touch bottom or it was a Kingfisher. The fact that it was a juvenile might have contributed to its getting into trouble but either was I realized that drowning birds in the yard was becoming a habit. Not wishing to cause further harm, I had to act.

First I dumped out the big dog dish bowl and left it empty. Next I put a long piece of wire into the rainwater containers so that accidental bathers might find their way out. I also covered the big garbage container full of water in the front of the house with a screen. Content that I'd made the yard safer for birds I retreated to my vintage deck chair and watched the feathered ones at the bath. While seated I once again took the logic of the ad campaign to task. How, I asked myself, might the message of the ads have affected the avian drowning victims or the perpetrator of the dangerous conditions.

I'm sure neither of the two birds that drowned in my water containers woke up thinking they were going to drown that day. But that might not have saved them anyway. Even if they had thought about drowning, they might instead have met their demise by being eaten by a Hawk or a house cat or even by being dashed on windowpane. There are only so many fears a poor bird's mind can review at the beginning of a day. One is bound to forget one or two.

The ad aside, it took two drowned birds to point out that I was exposing the avian life of the yard to birds to added dangers and as a result I made changes. As a result of their sacrifice fewer birds will die in the yard. But I'm not going to say that outright. I'll just going to leave you with 'no one wakes up today thinking that they might drown a bird'.