Robin update part II: More bad news, a death talk, and an empty nest

Bailey the Wonder Dog chewed up another of our young robins yesterday. We didn't mean for it to happen...it was an oversight to even let her into the back yard. You see, a pretty good line of storms moved through town yesterday afternoon and dropped about 3 inches of rain on us. For a little while, there was concern that the storms could become severe or even turn tornadic. And in the middle of it all I found myself back in the yard, in the middle of a downpour, gently scooping up the mauled remains of a second fledgling.

In all fairness to the dog, there's no way to know if the bird was dead before she got to her or not. I also think it needs to be mentioned that the fledgling had to be on the ground when Bailey got it. And a bird that small and defenseless stuck on the ground in a torrential downpour was probably doomed...BTWD might have just been speeding up the inevitable. But it still sucked.

This time I felt like I couldn't dance around the issue with Littlemagette. The "I have to clean up some Bailey poop" excuse doesn't really work when there's a storm going on. On the other hand, it could have come in handy when he goes to grade school:

Bully kid: My daddy's tough!
Littlemagette: Well my daddy's tough to!
Bully kid: Oh yeah? Well my daddy's bigger than your daddy!
Littlemagette: Oh yeah? Well my daddy runs out into thunderstorms to pick up dog poop!
Bully kid: Ooohhh....here's my lunch money...take it and please just don't hurt me.

So after conducting my second trash can solo funeral in two days, I got to have another "death talk" with Littlemagette. (As a side note, if I can handle these "death talks", the inevitable "sex talk" is going to be a piece of cake. I teach biology...I can talk about sex. This metaphysical death stuff, though, is hard.) The conversations went something like this:

Littlemagette (LM): What did you do?
Mistermagette (MM): One of the litte birds died. I had to go get it.
LM: One of the robins?
MM: Yes.
LM: Why did it die?
MM: Sometimes baby birds blow out of their nests in storms.*
LM: And they die?
MM: Yes.
LM: What happens when they die?
MM: Well, when something dies it goes to live with God.**
LM: How does it get there?
MM: I think sometimes God comes to get it.
LM: Did God come to get the little baby robin?
MM: I think he probably did.
LM: (Looking out the window at the pouring rain) How? I didn't see Him?***
MM: God usually comes when we're not looking.
LM: Did you ever see him?
MM: No.****

Notes on this conversation:
*This may make me a liar, but I don't have the heart to tell Littlemagette that our dog is a vicious killer of baby birds. He can learn the whole "nature red in tooth and claw" stuff when he's a little older. (Maybe I'll work that into the sex talk.)
**I don't wish to argue about whether or not animals go to heaven. I'm trying to explain something to a 3-year-old.
***I remember having this exact conversation with my parents when I wasn't much older than Littlemagette. A calf had died on the farm, and I spent the next morning waiting for God to fly down in a helicopter and get it.
****For the record, I see God every time I look at Littlemagette...but I'm pretty sure his head would explode if I tried to explain THAT one to him.

When everything was said and done, I decided to check the nest one last time. Empty. All four birds were gone. I can confirm that two are dead. I saw one leave the nest. I'm not sure what happened to the fourth...I hope the little guy made it.