Yesterday the fourth grade went on a field trip to a Nevada history site. It is the original building of Las Vegas. (Ironically, built by Mormon missionaries in 1855--not a casino, but a trading post.) The place is now a state park, and was owned by a string of people who took it over from the missionaries after they left, using it as a trading post and then a ranch, then a railroad water stop and finally in 1905, Sin City was incorporated.
Anyway...at the field trip, we happened upon a young bird that had left the nest, but couldn't yet fly and so it hopped to a pile of wood, where it tried to be invisible under a log. However, we could clearly see it, sitting there, so un-birdlike. The kids thought this was the best part of the field trip. A real bird, just sitting there! I encouraged them to use quiet voices and to not touch it because it wasn't a pet. It was a wild bird, and it is best to not touch wild animals--just observe them. I think it was a mockingbird because of the color and design on its wings.
Today, I got home, and Cool Guy called me over to look at something that was, from his tone of voice, quite remarkable. Laying there on the ground was a dead bird. This bird I know was a mockingbird, because I recognized it, having seen it up close and personal for about a week at our house. We have a nesting pair of them who live in our yard each Spring and raise a brood. During the three/four week period of the incubation and until the babies head out on their own, the parents are super vigilant.
The Queen of Kitty Cats drives them CRAZY! And I don't actually blame her. They just can't bear her existence during their nesting time. She is ultra-casual about it. She lies in the open garage door while CoolGuy works on his motorcycle and coolly watches them jump around on the driveway shrieking at her. She'll saunter over and lay under the truck, and the two birds will hop under there with her yelling and hollering at her very presence. When she steps out into the open, they'll take flight and dive-bomb her to peck at her head. She doesn't like that at all. But she won't go back in the house.
Besides, it doesn't halt the barrage: they just follow her in and stand on the door jamb chastising her. I saw one actually hop about two feet into the kitchen to give her a piece of birdie-mind. They are relentless and fearless. Sadly.
When CoolGuy showed me the little limp carcass, I immediately thought that Kitty Cat had taken up her old ways. In Maryland, she frequently hunted in the cornfield next to our house, and often left her "love offerings" of dead rodents and birds on our kitchen steps. But, no, it was a sad story of hubris and daring.
CoolGuy was engrossed in putting together his engine and hadn't seen the bird go all the way through the garage and into the open kitchen door, pursuing the cat. When CoolGuy later went into the house for a bathroom break, he was startled to see the mockingbird perched on the windowsill of the bathroom, hoping to find a way through the glass to the outdoors it could see. CoolGuy tried to grab him up, and nearly succeeded, but the bird escaped the bathroom and flew into the living room. CoolGuy opened all the doors, and hoped that our little pest would see the escape and leave. But instead, the bird flew at top speed right into a large window next to the open door, and brained himself. He fell to the floor, bleeding and died after a couple of minutes.
Oh.
So, CoolGuy put him outside on the ground near the tree so that the mate would know what had become of the partnership. Kitty Cat sat in the doorway looking out inscrutably. And the other half of the KittyCat Harassment Team launched into the routine with greater fervor, since now he/she was a loner. I'm sad for the children.
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4 comments:
I find you delightful, funny, and well adapted to travel, it's my favorite thing, to adapt to new territory or cultures is a very special talent pioneers in covered wagons showed was an American way, extending hands and smiles to feathered and bare Indians, must have been a great and unfearful experience in overcoming the language barrier, but so enriching at end of day in your neck of the woods, it keeps you young and beautiful in nature, bye.
Earth Sign Mama is much like me, I find, she very much lives in present time, looking and videoing the rain, exhibits good nature and calm attitude, not frizzy like those in big city corrals. She's pleasant and I could listen to her voice all day.
I really have to find out how to put a video on a web site, it seems a miracle of techno intelligence, again, gosh.
Living in the west in places like Wyoming, if you find landscapes appealing, must help in getting back your basic human natureI have friends that went to Jackson Hole to ski and said they were hypnotized by the white snow mountains being that they were nature people who wanted to ski, that's all, for all their days. All of it sounded tasty to my city ears.Open spaces, open spaces in your life as to what could be or must be.
Sometimes you meet someone that enriches you being and you want to talk to forever, Earth Sign Mama is a real human being, little bits of her day could inspire me to write a very long, pages, post. Telling me of the birds in the house, gave me a video in my head, she painted a picture that was beatiful, museum quality. We clicked stronger than anything previous.
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