This morning, a lovely photo of a bird came with this question in a Bird Group I'm on (on Facebook, where else):
This bird landed on a friend's lap while sitting on their patio. It stayed for a few seconds and then flew off into the woods. Could someone ID this bird for me?
I loved one the replies, this one in particular. It really got me thinking.
Some believe a "visit" from a deceased love one perhaps....documented stories of birds and butterflies doing this, randomly landing on people, then taking off just fine. ... odd to land on a live moving object, regardless.
How many birds and butterflies in my life might have been visits from lost loved ones?
Not even one,
I was thinking. A hummingbird once touched me with its beak, but I was wearing a floral dress; a colorful cotton-print flower tricked this little winged visitor. The dress, its colors, its floral print, looked a lot like this:
Butterflies have landed on me, but I never mistook one for my sister or grandma or any human soul.
How lovely to believe things like this:
When loved ones pass, their main concern for us is to let us know that even in death, they are still alive and their soul is still with you. They want you to feel comforted at this time. They work their hardest at getting a sign to you at the moments you most need them.
"Spirit animals let you know loved ones are still nearby" by Bonnie Page
And this:
source: Are Butterflies Signs From The Angels?
Surrounded by lost loved ones, or not,
I stepped outside to enjoy the fall day and to keep an eye out for visiting birds and butterflies.
A giant spider galloped in, but I caught it and set it back outside.
Not much stirring out there but the wind, today. I wondered how imminent the demise of my sister Lori, age 63, may be. She is not doing well. I'd rather hear her voice on the phone than have her land on my shoulder as a monarch, or gallop through the front door as a spider.
My thoughts turned to housekeeping and getting lunch ready and just when I opened the door to go back into the house, something landed on my head.
A tree frog!
Coincidence, right?
Never mind the timing. IT HAD TO BE A SIGN, right?
Can't say I've ever had a frog fall onto my head before!
We've seen this frog on and off all summer. It leaves its droppings on our front porch, and it sometimes stretches a little webbed hand out from behind the wooden shutter. I've tried to snap photos, but he blends into the bricks or cement and is hard to spy, so I highlighted him in yellow in this rare snapshot I took in June (with our daughter humming "Someday my prince will come"):
Here's the thing. Only two days before, on the phone with Lori, we recalled how our Grandpa, on his deathbed in a hospital, kept seeing frogs on the ceiling.
Grandpa? Was that you?
Still highly unlikely, I would say, but how fun to imagine he dropped in to say hello.
I wanted to photograph this little grey visitor, but it took both hands to capture him and he squirted them thoroughly, so, no, I just let him out asap, and he hopped out of sight. Definitely gray, not green, but I wondered if that's because frogs can do that chameleon thing. Here's a gray tree frog someone else photographed:
Um, yeah, a butterfly might be lovelier, but a wet, gray frog plopping onto my head was a welcome surprise. Just so long as this amphibian isn't telling me my sister Lori has suddenly departed and managed to say goodbye via Tree Frog on her way to heaven.
Come to think of it, it's exactly the kind of sign Lori would give me - not butterflies, not cardinals and hummers. Lori would dump a frog on my head. Or a spider.
Only yesterday Lori was back in E.R., feeling miserable. Dialysis is horrific, and the "oil change" she jokes about is not something she would want me to describe in a public venue, so I will only say that she went home that same day, feeling "better," but her "better" is still pretty bad. Today, her daughter made the five-hour drive to see her. That should help keep Lori going for another three months or three thousand miles. Nothing brightens her day like seeing her only child.
When the dreaded day does come, maybe Lori will occupy a lion should she want to say hello. A lion would be nice. But I'll take a frog or whatever else you can access.
Meanwhile: STAY ABOVE GROUND, sis!