As I awaited a call back on an important matter, I felt jittery. Sitting on the couch, aimlessly scrolling through social media, wasn’t going to make my situation any better, so I turned to my dog and said, “Do you want to go outside?” 

Those words work like magic on him. His little ears perk up, his body tenses, and a spark illuminates his dark brown eyes.

It was a sunny afternoon, in the mid-eighties. While the dog sniffed the grass, checking for scented calling cards from birds, bugs, and rodents that might have visited since that morning, I listened to the birds singing and tried to spot them in the trees. Before long, I heard the vocal clicks and the whirring sound of the hummingbird’s rapid wing flutter. Then I saw my little friend approaching the top of the olive tree.

“Bonjour, Colibri!” I joyfully declared.

I doubt that this particular bird was French, but that’s the language I frequently speak to most kinds of birds and many dogs. There are a couple of advantages to doing this. First, my French is very basic, and I find that birds and dogs will not laugh at me, if I mispronounce a word or conjugate a verb incorrectly. But most importantly, no matter what breed the bird or dog may be, and whatever their country of origin, they all seem to understand French at least as well as English.

Many years ago, I saw an elderly man in Golden Gate Park, sitting on a bench, feeding squirrels. There were several congregated at his feet, eating the peanuts he had scattered. He looked one of the squirrels in the eye, as he held a peanut up between his thumb and index finger. “Come here, Charlie,” he commanded.

The squirrel leapt up onto the bench, snatched the peanut, and munched it before hopping back to the ground.

“That’s amazing,” I said. “How did you know that one was Charlie?”

The old man raised his head and gave me a wink. “I didn’t,” he confessed. “I call them all Charlie!”

On this particular afternoon, I was surprised that Madame Colibri was so friendly. She flew towards my face and hovered for a few seconds. Then she darted a short distance back and forth and stopped again, directly in front of me. I was glad I had my phone, so I could take some pictures of her unusually congenial salutation.

For the next few days, every time I was in my garden, I wondered if the hummingbird would come up to me like that again. But oddly, I didn’t see her or even hear her clicks. Six days passed before I finally saw a hummingbird, but it buzzed in and out so quickly, I hardly got a look at it. The next day, I saw a very tiny hummingbird. It got within a few feet of me, then flitted over the fence and out of sight.

My sweet encounter with Madame Colibri happened just over a week ago. Could it be that her friendly greeting had really meant good-bye?