Today, at approximately 5:57 am while standing in my brother’s bathroom, my life was changed. And it all started three days ago, when I took two robin’s eggs from an abandoned nest and carried them inside in a tissue. Now, this may not sound like a life-stopping-Cinderella-story introduction, but just wait.

Don’t go looking at me as an egg-stealer, a bird-killer, or a reckless fool who doesn’t think things through. Because I did think this through, and before I carried the eggs in, I made an incubator. It wasn’t like I was just going to set them in a random shoe or a cup, and wait for them to pop out. No sir, I had a plan, and I made a homemade nest for these little guys.

With careful instructions from a “how to” video, I wrapped warm rags and stuffed animals in a circle, setting the eggs in the middle. I took my brother’s desk lamp, and placed it right overhead, creating a warm, toasty environment. However, after much research on the hatching of eggs, I realized that if an egg is too cold for too long, it will surely die. I had no clue how long the nest had been abandoned, so I cranked the heat up in hopes to somehow bring them back to life.

My family laughed, and called me crazy, but I thought it was worth a try. I was honestly just trying to see what I could get away with. And apparently, bringing two wild bird eggs into the house and attempting to save them is perfectly in my realm.

But, after two long days, the eggs hadn’t moved. We kept the lamp on, kept the rags in place, but the eggs looked stone cold dead. We did move the box however, because my little brother swore he heard a chirping noise, and it freaked him out. After explaining to him that there is no physical way a bird inside an eggshell can make a chirping sound, I still had to relocate the incubator, because my mom said so.

Now comfortably located in the bathroom, I intently checked the box every few hours to search for any signs of life. Each time, I was greeted with unmoving, boring shells. I prepared myself for the worse, and decided that if they didn’t move in the next twenty four hours, they were goners.

This morning, bracing myself for the news, I made my way to the box. It was early, not even 6 am (because I wake up at the ass crack of dawn), and I still rubbed my eyes sleepily. Peering over the edge of the box, I choked back a gasp and blinked my eyes rapidly. Surely I was seeing things, or dreaming, because one of the eggs was cracked a third of the way open. A gooey little sack of I-don’t-know-what was inside, and I eagerly woke my mom up to prove that I wasn’t hallucinating.

“This can’t be happening.” We both said. We had no idea what to do with a naked, featherless sack of bird life. We had no idea how to feed it, care for it, make sure it stayed alive. The only thing I could think of saying was, “I truly didn’t think it would hatch..”

Yet somehow, despite every odd and doubt that was going against the little fella, a robin somehow hatched under a desk lamp and an old rag.

My mom and I are still debating on how we are going to handle this unusual situation I’ve brought upon us, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.

And so, at 5:57 am, standing in my brother’s bathroom starring at a hatching baby bird, I realized that life is a crazy, unpredictable story and God is a genius of an author, because I sure didn’t see this plot twist coming.

Wish me luck.
Maddie Rheinheimer.