January 12: Cardinal Sins

I have two birdfeeders off my deck. Yesterday, we had a rare 4 inches of good, clean snow and the world now looks idyllic.

The male cardinals act like kings or Vikings or conquerors in my back yard. Four birds perch on the feeders, three cardinals. They deign to let a wren or chickadee land for a short while, but most of them are on the ground, eating the crumbs that either I dropped in the snow or the other birds were not able to keep in their mouths. Or perhaps they are feeding others? Can we know? That is probably our tendency, post-romanticism, of attributing humanity and even human kindness to animals.

“Cardinal sins” is a Roman Catholic term; Wikipedia says they are pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth (acedia). (Wikipedia calls them the “Seven Deadly Sins.” I know they don’t have anything to do with bright red birds, and animals don’t sin; they just are. Someone called the birds cardinals because of their resemblance to the red-robed leaders of the Roman church.

Yet I see ourselves in those cardinals.

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