Yesterday I had a very interesting morning. On my way down to Arabic
class, I found a sparrow sitting right outside Birge. Now, the
breezeway between Birge and LeConte (the two physics buildings) kills
birds on a regular basis. It has a glass wall that the birds don't see,
so they run into it and die, which is rather sad. There are hawks
painted on the glass to try to scare away the birds, but it doesn't
really work. Just around a month ago I found a dead sparrow right under
the glass there. 
It was very sad.
So I saw this sparrow, but it was sitting up, which surprised me, since dead birds usually lay on their sides. So I walk right up to it to see, and it doesn't move, but it has one eye open. The other one is swollen shut. But it is clearly alive. I decided to try to pick it up, since I figured it was injured or it would have flown away when I walked up. It just sat there, and let me pick it up!
Now I had a dilemma: I had to go to Arabic class, but I couldn't just set the poor bird back down and leave it to its fate! And I certainly couldn't leave it in my office while I went to class. So I decided to take it with me to my Arabic class. The little guy sat there calmly in my hands as I walked all the way to Wheeler. Wheeler isn't really that far, but it sure seems like a long way to walk with an injured bird in your hands.
It turns out I was five minutes early for class, since I usually play harmonica before class, so I leave a bit early. But our student teacher was there, and another student, waiting in the hall for the class before us to get out. So I told them about the bird, and that I was afraid it might have broken its wing. The student told me that he thought there was an animal shelter somewhere in West Berkeley, but that wasn't too helpful. Meanwhile the bird started going to the bathroom and turning around. His head was doing some weird twitching, and one eye was still swollen shut. I borrowed some newspaper to clean off my hand, and when the class got out, I went in and put the newspaper on a desk and set the sparrow on the desk, which he didn't seem to mind very much.
Then in walked two girls from our class, and one of them said something like ``Oh, you have a bird!'' I started explaining that he was injured, and suddenly he starts flying! So we're in this little room in Wheeler, with a poor sparrow fluttering around the ceiling! One student opened up the window, and someone else turned off the lights, and I was trying to stand on chairs so I could reach him. Finally he landed on the fluorescent light fixture, so I stood on the table to reach him. He was surprisingly very calm (or at least he didn't squirm) as I picked him up and then set him on the window ledge. And then he just sat there. We just watched him for a while, and then after thirty seconds or a minute, he flew off, and fluttered down to the lawn below.
I guess when he ran into the glass, he just got a black eye and maybe a concussion, leaving him rather dazed and disoriented. It actually didn't occur to me that he might not have a serious injury that prevented him from flying away! It was a very strange occurrence. I have never held a wild bird like that before! I don't know why one sparrow fell to the ground dead, while the other fell to the ground only dazed and confused, but I trust that neither fell to the ground apart from the will of God.
``Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father...So don't be afraid; for you are worth more than many sparrows.''-Mathew 10:29