It was an innocent mistake. But sometimes innocence makes terrible mistakes. I was 17 years old and it was my first year on the farm.

I saw a mother quail pulling a string behind her, parting the thick, green grass. I was charmed by her adorable headdress — a little decoration, really, that bobbed as she walked along.

I watched from the kitchen window, as she proceeded along in a straight, determined line. Was the string attached to her leg? Or did she pull it along in her beak. The string stretched back, a good six feet behind her. I just had to find out what was going on.

I slipped out the back door, and I tip-toed from tree to tree, coming ever closer, for a better view. I could see, at one point, that she noticed me, cocking her head, just barely. That should have been warning enough to make me turn back. But my curiosity became unbearable, as I sought to expose her secret.

I inched closer and closer, until I was right upon her. Taking my eyes off of the lady, I gazed straight down, right into the frightened eyes of a covey of baby quail!

Stunned, I took a step back, and the babies began to scream! Each scream was multiplied by fifteen tiny, scurrying, scattering babies. They ran, flat out for the rhubarb patch! I figured I was in for a pecking from Mamma quail, and I stood stark-still.

Then Mamma began this little dance. Suddenly her wing became “broken” as she fluttered and dragged it, ever approaching closer to my feet. She came right up to me, and she flopped like a wounded chicken, enticing me to take her, and not her babies.

“I’m so sorry, little mother,” I cried, backing away. She followed me all the way up to the back door as I slipped back inside, and only then, did she go tearing over to the rhubarb patch. With shrieking cries and flapping wings, she searched and called to her babies.

My heart broke, as I watched her, helplessly wondering if she would ever find all of them. I never knew.

How awful I felt. I knew that I had blundered onto something precious and sacred. A cruel unknowing had caused the real terror of innocent, living beings. It has haunted me for forty years, and it still bothers me.

It occurred to me, recently, that there are many such blunders, in this life, that hurt others. That first rush to tell someone, how awful their new haircut looks. That irresistible urge we have to explain to someone with medical problems, how “Aunt Sadie died.” And what about the things that we are not certain of? What about the times that we repeat the gossip we hear, just to feel a part of the crowd?

How do we treat that new family at church? Do we grill them for information, and then dump them once we know everything? Or do we speak to them at all? And the new girl at work. Do we overcome our own discomfort so that we can help her over those first terrible weeks, when she feels new, and strange, and friendless? Or do we cling to those we know, comforting ourselves with the notion that we belong, never thinking about how uncomfortable it must feel to be a stranger?

How we treat others says a lot about who we are. What we say about others, speaks volumes about what we are. The things we say about others, says more about us, than it says about them.

I’ve been on the “inside” and I’ve been on the “outside,” but the happiest times of my life are when I have been on the “right” side — the side of sensitivity, acceptance, compassion and love.

Jaye Lewis jlewis@smyth.net