I stood in my basement about 5 pm Wednesday, June 21st, 2023 reading old articles that I wrote for some newspapers early in my journalism career. My newspaper archive is well preserved, although a little musty smelling from 25+ years of aging paper and news ink. It was therapeutic reading these articles that I wrote as a rising, cocky, cub news reporter in 1987 for the Associated Newspapers, a group of 6 community newspapers that was headquartered in Wayne, MI. I laughed out loud when I saw one of my articles about rising gas prices in metro Detroit that stated “gas prices, according to AAA, have risen 7.5 cents a gallon in the last week to an average of $1.04.’’

$1.04 a gallon for gas. Ha! I remember as a 16-year-old in 1984 turning in 40 returnable cans and getting enough cash to pump 4 gallons into my 1976 Ford Elite and still having enough to buy a Snickers bar and a Coke. Those were the good ol’ days.

As I sifted through more newspapers, I found a news snippet about the 20-year anniversary of the accidental sinking of the submarine USS Scorpion, which sank in 1968 in 10,000 feet of water near the Azores, killing all 99 crewman on board. Around 55 ships joined the search for the submarine, which the U.S. Navy eventually determined had imploded. Investigators believed a torpedo accidentally exploded inside its tube, cracked the hull, and filled it with water. Even today, that’s still just one of many theories about the disaster.

It made me think about the tragedy last week of Oceangate’s Titan 5-seat submersible vehicle being lost 12,700 feet in the Atlantic Ocean on a mission to visit the wreckage of the famed Titanic cruise ship that sunk after hitting an iceberg in April 1912.

U.S. Coast Guard, Canadian Coast guard and a bunch of other private company ships joined the search throughout the week to find the sub and its 5 lone occupants trapped inside the 21-foot long Titan tube. The price to ride on the once-in-a-lifetime visit to view the Titanic? $250,000. The risk to ride in it? Death. The intended outcome? To witness the world’s most iconic shipwreck two and a half miles at the bottom of the crushing Atlantic ocean.

A noise at the egress window in the basement distracted me. Outside in the egress area, a 24″ x 18″ semi-circle area filled with rocks and debris and 18 inches below the lawn, was a trapped baby bird. It tried to fly, but couldn’t make it up above the egress rim.

I opened the window and tried to coax it out. I yelled, “FLY BABY FLY!!!’’ It looked at me and laughed….No, it did nothing but stare at me with bulging bird eyes.

It was either too young to fly and still learning, or it had an injured wing.

Concerned, I went outside and removed the metal grate that covered the egress window area so that the bird (now I’ve nicknamed it Birdie) could fly away. But it didn’t. It ran around inside the egress window area chirping wildly while 5 other Robins swooped close to my head, apparently to warn me to stay away from Birdie.

Frustrated, I went inside the house and turned on the TV news where coverage continued on the lost Titan submarine. The U.S. Coast Guard reported they heard “noises’’ from the depths of the Atlantic, possibly banging noises from the Titan submersible. At least the media was reporting it like that. That gave the world hope.

It brought me back to Birdie – trapped 18 inches below the depths of the earthen soil, where it could not reach the ground because it couldn’t fly. Birdie was in its tomb because, in the egress area, without food and water, it would die.

So I brought it a ham sandwich and a beer….

Ha! No — I carefully placed a bowl of water and sesame seeds in the egress area for Birdie so it could eat and drink. It was suspicious at first, but then ate some seeds, jumped in the water and drank it.

The five occupants trapped inside the Titan sub weren’t so lucky. More than a dozen ships searched an area twice the size of Connecticut for the sub and its crew. At least Birdie was within a hand’s grasp to grab it and let it go.

My next step with Birdie was more coaxing. I encouraged it, she, him — whichever pronoun Birdie uses — to fly away. Nothing worked. I even stared at Birdie’s bulging eyes and tried to telepathically convince it to fly away. Hey, that could work!! I yelled at it, spoke nicely to it, I sang to it — well, maybe not “sang’‘ to it, but….Yes, I sang to Birdie.

I opened the window, yelled to now NINE swarming Robins and pointed my finger to Birdie’s exact location. I swore under my breath. This wasn’t working. Time to take measures into my own hands.

I charged upstairs and blurted to my wife, “Sue, let’s go rescue Birdie.’’ She thought I was crazy and told me to stop harassing the bird.

But as a team, we went outside to Birdie’s Titan submersible egress death trap: Me as some bird-saving superhero, and my wife just rolling her eyes. I had a life preserver in hand to rescue Birdie — a 24-inch plastic planter tray. I shoved it into Birdie’s Atlantic Ocean death tomb. He….it….she flapped its wings like an angry butterfly, worked its way up the plastic tray…and escaped its tomb where it landed on the grass in a shallow hole. Birdie was free! The media coverage went crazy, bright flashes from press photographers taking pictures was blinding. Well, ok, that didn’t happen. But it should have.

The drama that unfolded behind Birdie’s rescue is no comparison to the deaths of the 5 mariners aboard the Titan sub. Unfortunately, the world learned on June 22nd that the Titan had imploded and all 5 of its crew are dead. We should all pray for their families.

But they’re comparable in the slightest instance in that life is so precious with every human, bird, and animal. We all have our own life issues, roadblocks, struggles, miscues, and rescues on this planet everyday, whether it’s trapped down an 18-inch egress, or trapped in a submarine 12,700 crushing feet beneath the Atlantic.

God Bless the souls who perished aboard the Titan, and God Bless the adventures of Birdie, who got a second chance at life last week.

Stay tuned to the next Stories from the Basement.