Over the decades, Dave Clarke has discovered the occasional unexpected creature at his engineering and welding company – like a rubber duck stuck on the front of a truck, or a plastic poop emoji with protruding peepers – but this was a first.
“It’s right in the middle of the shop,” Dave says, pointing to a chain hanging from the ceiling with a hook at the end.
“On the crane hook.”
Sometime during the night, a bird had started building a nest in the curve of the dangling hook.
“She must have woke up in the morning and gone, ‘Oh my God!’” Dave laughs. “‘What have I done?!’”
Trucks are rumbling. Metal is clanking. Sparks are flying. This is no nurturing nursery.
But the hummingbird was undeterred, and eventually manufactured a pair of products the left the shop’s human welders in awe.
“How the heck did a little bird lay that big of an egg?” Dave laughs. “A couple days later there was another one!”
Once the babies started hatching, thanks to their mother’s unrivalled work ethic, they never stopped growing.
“Talk about perseverance,” Dave says as the hummingbird flys over to the nest, lands on the hook, and starts feeding.
“It’s huge.”
While the feathered family has earned the respect of Dave’s crew, his customers were another matter.
“They are just surly kinds of guys,” Dave says. “They look like they would chew nails and spit them out.”
But then Dave brings them around back to meet the birds, and their tough exteriors crumble.
“The compassionate side of them comes out!” Dave smiles.
Their hearts seemed to swell even bigger than the young birds that have almost outgrown their nest.
“Now, they’re to the point where they’re getting ready to fly,” Dave says, as one of the birds stretches its torso out of the nest and flaps its wings furiously.
And when the inevitable happens, the previously unthinkable will occur, Dave will decommission the crane hook
“The hook will come off the chain and be displayed here forever,” Dave smiles.
Unlike the rubber duck and plastic emoji, the empty nest will be a reminder of the full hearts these little birds engineered.
