here.
* * *
At 4:45 this morning, I woke to the sound of Fred walking into the bedroom.
“What?” I said, taking out one ear plug.
“We have a problem,” he said. Which is when I realized I heard faint cheeping.
“Is that a
bird?” I said.
“It’s four tiny pink featherless baby birds in a nest that fell out of the chimney.”
I pondered that for a moment. “It was in the
house?”
“Yeah.”
“And the cats weren’t going nuts?”
“No.”
I sat up and turned the light on, and sure enough – he had a handful of nest and brand-spanking-new baby birds, squirming around and cheeping for their momma.
“There’s no way these things are going to live,” he said. “I don’t want them to suffer. What the hell do we do?”
“Why don’t you put the nest in the bush next to the porch?” I suggested.
“The nest is broken,” he said. “They’ll just fall out.”
We dithered about it for a few minutes, I said “GODDAMNIT!” many times, and finally I told him to just lay the nest on the front porch. Either the mother bird would find and care for them – not likely – or something would kill them, hopefully quickly. He went to work out, and I went back to sleep, whereupon I dreamed about raising baby birds who turned into kittens who jumped off furniture in an attempt to fly (one of them was a dead ringer for Sugarbutt as a baby).
An hour later, Fred woke me so we could medicate the kittens before he left for work.
“I think Newt got them,” he said. “When I came back to the house, Newt came from that direction, the nest had been moved about five feet, and it was empty.”
Our country kitties: killing machines. If they’re not murdering little baby birds, they’re killing moles and leaving them on the cement pad out back. (Apparently we have a New York City-sized population of moles on our property, judging by how often we find dead ones on the cement pad.)
Now. I KNOW y’all aren’t going to say that we should have tried to keep and raise the baby birds. I’ll repeat: they were brand-spanking-new, barely moving, and no. Just no. That would be lunacy.
Still, I feel bad for the little guys, and the stupid momma bird who built a nest in the chimney. Also, I feel bad for us, for hiring chimney sweeps who can’t properly install a chimney cap. Stupid chimney sweeps.
(Sorry, no pictures. For once, it didn’t occur to me!)
* * *
I spent two hours weeding amongst the summer squash and zucchini plants yesterday and got about two-thirds of the row finished. This morning I finished the row of squash – note to 2008 Robyn and Fred: plant the squash and zucchini much further apart next time, dumbasses – weeded the row of whatever the hell’s growing next to the row of squash (black-eyed peas? black beans? Fuck if I know), and then went between the row of squash and whatever-it-is with the
Dutch Hoe and chopped up the weeds between the rows.
The squash plants are pretty much on top of each other – being as we’re first-time gardeners, we didn’t know they would get quite so big – so I had to climb in amongst the plants to weed. The plants were absolutely covered with bees investigating the squash blossoms, but they completely ignored me.
If you had told my family, back when I was little and would run screaming “Beechies! Beechies!” every time I saw anything the slightest bit creepy-crawly, that I’d be working* in and amongst bees, that I’d look out my bedroom window every morning to see if the spiders who’ve set up webs right outside my windows have caught anything good, that I’ll see a spider web in the corner of my bedroom and leave it there (as long as the spider keeps it clean, that is), that I’d see a wasp and just smack it with a fly swatter rather than run screaming from the room, that I’d see a big nasty weird-looking bug and get as close as possible to shoot a picture of it, they’d have
known you were on drugs.
Nothing like living in the country to get you over your fear of bugs, I’m telling you. If I flew into a tizzy every time I saw a weird bug, I’d be in a permanent state of running around screaming, and the human body ain’t made to sustain that level of tizziness.
*Possibly the “working” part of that would have shocked them more than anything.
* * *
The kittens are doing well – they’re still little wild things when it comes to medicating them, but we’ve established a rhythm wherein Fred chases them down, picks them up by the nape of the neck, we wrap a small towel around them (to protect me from flailing claws), I squirt the medicine in their mouth, and then we put them down and let them run away, which they do while hissing the entire time.
Poor monkeys.
They forgive easily – at least Tina Louise does, since I have yet to get my hands on any of the other kittens. Yesterday I took a nap in the kitten room with them (a catnap, of course) and when I woke up, Maryanne was sitting about two feet away staring at me with hatred.
It’s a start.
That’s a very Mister Boogers look on her face.
i has a taste
“Dude. Seriously. All the freakin’ time with the DANCING. And not only dancing, but DISCO dancing. It’s no wonder I run around hissing all the damn time. ‘Left the cake out in the rain and now I’ll never have the recipe again’, my tail.”
More kitten pics
hither.
* * *
“I yam a bird and I yam gonna fly! Cowabungaaaaaaaaaa!”
* * *
Previously
2006: “I’d like to suggest, in the most non-harassing way possible, that we go for a hike after dinner.”
2005: Gives a whole new meaning to the term of endearment “Shithead”, doesn’t it?
2004: No entry.
2003: Still no Fancypants.
2002: What the FUCK is going on with Meg Ryan’s hair?!
2001: House hunting.
2000: Any way you slice it, it’s going to be one hell of a long drive.]]>