09/11/2026
A reflection on this 25th anniversary of 9/11. Violent conflict takes a toll not only on humanity but on all creatures with whom we share this Earth.
How does one write a 9/11 25th anniversary post… for a wildlife rescue? Saying nothing at all seems wrong, and a simple “remembering 9/11” post seems wrong. I didn’t know what to say.
And then I remembered the bird.
I remember the bird I saw in some of the live footage on that horrible, horrible day. It swept briefly into view, then into the distance, behind the camera, fleeing, like everyone else, for safety. It was on camera for less than a second, and was too blurry and fast to even identify, but that bird meant something to me.
It’s not that I thought the bird’s life compared, in any way, to a human’s. It’s that, in this one blink-and-you-miss-it frame, I remembered that we’re all organisms, all part of something bigger than us, all mortals trying to survive… whether we’re in Manhattan or the Amazon. And that, for all the wonders of engineering and technology and military strategy, we and our wild neighbors are on this same planet together and subject to the same tragedies, be they natural or manmade.
Twenty-five years later, I still think about that bird. I imagine it flying across the city, fleeing the smoke and heat, perhaps forced to abandon its young, and taking refuge in some familiar roost, soot-covered and weak. Did it suffocate hours later? Or did it survive, with descendants still in Central Park today?
I think about all the animals who live alongside us in our cities, our suburbs, our forests, and our fields. They don’t understand our wars, our politics, our buildings, or the reasons we hurt one another. They simply live in the world we share with them, and when that world becomes dangerous, they flee, hide, endure, and try to survive.
That is part of why we do what we do.
Today, we remember the people who were lost on September 11, 2001, and in the long and brutal wars the followed.
And we remember that fragile, complicated, shared world they left behind— one that includes every human being, and every wild creature trying to make its way through it.
We remember. We rescue. We care for what remains, for the broken and the weak. For Mallow, this picture of innocence.
Twenty-five years later, we still remember the bird.
