Most weekends I go to my office because I do not have a computer at home. It is Saturday, but I was on my way to the university before six. There was little traffic. At one large intersection I cross every day I saw a juvenile female blackbird. It was all legs. The poor thing jumped out of its nest before it learned how to fly. The bird walked about briskly and importantly, as though it knew exactly where it was going. But it was utterly lost, as witnessed by its haphazard meanderings around the intersection and the roads leading to it. My first impulse was to catch it and take it away from the traffic, which would soon turn very busy, but I gave up the idea rather quickly. If a car does not kill the blackbird, a cat will. Or a dog. It was lost. Even its parents had given up already. They were nowhere to be seen. I departed with a bright thought: “All I can do about this little thing is write it up!”