Bird Brain

This weekend J’s parents & brother helped us tear down the unsightly lean-to shed someone thoughtfully attached to our 100 year-old house in the last century. (Thanks Mom, Dad, and Safety Joe!) Roughly 20 hours of manual labor later, we’re ready for phase 2: excavating, pouring a concrete driveway, building a garage, and siding the house. Sadly, I did little more than make several batches of iced tea and toss a few handfuls of rotten lumber into the dumpster. I felt a bit fraudulent in my safety glasses and hardhat, and I wanted to do more to help. So when I saw some black-capped chickadees building a nest in a tiny hole in the front of our house, I thought I’d expedite the upcoming siding process by plugging the hole with steel wool.

After I did so, I realized how deeply I’d upset the cute little chickadees intent on raising their young in the wall of our house. They kept flying up to the plugged hole with beakfuls of nesting material; then, confused at seeing it blocked, they’d fly into a nearby tree and squawk at me. This went on for about two hours, and of course it broke my heart. I had no idea how determined they would be.

So I did what any rational grown woman would do. I started crying, propped the ladder back up against the house, and pulled the steel wool out of their nesting hole. But first I raced to Petco, bought a birdhouse, hung it on the front of the house, realized it wasn’t acceptable to the chickadees, and hung it in the back yard. J was exasperated, and who can blame him. We’ll have to wait until July to side the house now, after the babies have fledged and left the nest.

But I must confess that I LIKE having those chickadees around. They nested in that same spot last summer, and I could hear the babies cheeping through my bedroom wall after they’d hatched. They eat insects and sing the Ha-Ha! song, for crying out loud. Simply put, they make me happy.

Anyway, I didn’t feel at peace until I saw them flying in and out of the hole again, rebuilding their nest for the last time. I further justify my actions by the fact that we also have purple finches building a nest in a hanging flower basket on our front porch. So, there are two good reasons to wait until July to finish the remodeling. (Well, they’re good reasons to me.)

Ultimately, the whole experience has not only mildly embarrassed me at my hopelessness in the face of wildlife dramas; it has also made me realize that I probably can’t give my mom any more crap for having trouble letting my younger brother and sister leave the nest.

Edit: put your pop music know-how to the test over at Manic Mom's place. She's even got a prize for the winner! I think the contest is still on. Steph, as Jem and her Holograms would say, you are truly, truly, truly outrageous.