In Which You Get to Hear the Birds' Side of the Story

Internet, I have been lax in my blog responsibilities these days.  Things have been going on – things that take up a lot of my brain space. Things that I cannot discuss via blog. Good things. (But not the thing that you are thinking.)

I have missed you and I have missed blogging and I have a whole HEAP of blog posts for your reading pleasure. (Or your eye-rolling pleasure, I’m cool with it either way.) Of course, I have to WRITE the posts, but I am going to TRY.

Anyway, I would like to fill you in on the drama that I’ve been experiencing over the past few months.

Drama that has caused me great angst. Drama that culminated, yesterday, in an act of vengeance so vindictive, so strategic, so MEAN that I am still upset.

But, because I am a fair person, I want to give you the background before I reveal how horribly I was wronged. That way, you can judge for yourself if the retaliation I endured was merited.

A couple of months ago, my husband and I went to The Home Depot. It’s our favorite store. And it was spring, and I was in the mood to Grow Things.

So I bought lots of things: pots, baby tomatoes and bell peppers and strawberries and a variety of herbs (none of which survived – NONE). I also bought a bunch of seed packets and some of those seed-starter things. And soil – copious amounts of soil. Some insecticidal soap. Some garden implements and garden gloves.  Stuff to make the soil hold water. Stuff to make the plants grow better. A SPRINKLER. All sorts of goodies.

We also bought two hanging baskets of lovely yellow pansies.

I don’t seem to have a photo of our house with the pansies, so I have included a highly accurate artist’s rendering below.

I feel compelled to admit to you that this drawing is a lie.

Our front door is not orange. It’s black. And it has a white screen door between it and the outside.

It’s ugly, is what I’m saying.

And I so very much want to have a bright, happy door.

Someday, Internet. Someday.

Also, I don’t know why the roof is red. That’s ridiculous. My roof is… black? Brown? Brack?

Anyway, I would like you to know that the pansies normally look like this:

 

But one day, I went outside to water them…

And they looked strange.

As though, all together, each pansy had decided to leap from the side of the basket.

And, being tethered to the basket by their roots, they remained frozen, mid leap.

Like so:

 

I was… perplexed.

What would prompt them to jump ship?

Perhaps they simply needed water, I thought.

So I pulled them from their hooks.

And what should I find inside…?

 

Yes, Internet. That is a NEST.

A BIRD had made a NEST inside my pansies!

Admittedly, it was kind of adorable.

But Internet. I cannot have birds just making themselves at home inside my FLOWER POTS.

After all, I spent money on those flowers.

And I am not going to WATER A BIRD’S NEST while trying to keep the flowers alive, you know?

So I carefully pulled the bird’s nest out of the flower pot and threw it away.

It was so delicate, Internet. Lovingly embroidered with hair (uuuuuuhhhhhhhh hair *shudder*) and grass and a piece of soft brown yarn.

I watered the pansies, restoring them to their cheerful glory, and figured that was the end of it.

Certainly, even a bird stupid enough to build a nest inside a flower pot wouldn’t build ANOTHER nest in that same pot, right? I mean, clearly the flower pot is inhospitable to nests! But to be on the safe side, I hung the bird’s nest basket on a different hook.

The next day, I hurried outside to check on my pansies.

Two sparrows flew away from my front porch in a very suspicious manner. They landed in the big maple tree in my front yard and looked at me worriedly.

There was ANOTHER NEST in the flower pot. The same flower pot from which I’d pulled their original nest. The flower pot that was now on the right-hand hook instead of the left-hand hook.

 

I removed the nest, watered the flowers, and went inside.  The sparrows chirped at me from the maple.

The next day, I set my jaw and headed outside.

Again, the panicked – and ominous – flap of sparrow wings.

I yanked down the pansy basket and looked inside.

Internet.

I saw a half-hearted nest – just a few strands of grass this time…

And…

 

An EGG.

These idiots had left their OFFSPRING in the same spot where TWO PREVIOUS NESTS had been demolished!

I am a cold and heartless and horrible person. So I gently lifted the little egg from the flower pot and put it in my garbage can.

I felt TERRIBLE about it, believe me!

But Internet! Birds are messy and destructive and I didn’t want to watch two sparrows raise a family in a flower pot that would have grown increasingly DEAD.

That night, I went to The Home Depot and bought some green plastic stakes that you use to anchor mesh into the ground around your strawberry plants (foreshadowing!). They were about three inches long and one end was pointy – but not DANGEROUS – and the other end was a flat circle.

My plan was to put the stakes in the flower pots, so that the pointy end pointed up, making it uncomfortable (but again, NOT DANGEROUS) for the birds to land and/or nest in the flower pots.

So I went outside the next morning to install my rudimentary Bird Begone device…

And there was ANOTHER EGG.

 

No nest this time.

Poor birds were so desperate to get the egg part out of the way, they stopped even caring about the nest.

Which, if you think about it, makes them pretty unfit parents, right?

I mean, what kind of parents build a home in a place that can be easily destroyed… And then, after it’s destroyed, build another home in THE EXACT SAME LOCATION… And then have babies there… And then when their baby DISAPPEARS, along with their THIRD HOME, they just have another one?

Clearly not ready for babies, is what I’m thinking. (I, um, disposed of the egg again.)

Anyway, that was it. I installed the plastic stakes, which seemed to do the trick. No more nests. No more eggs.

The sparrows hung out on the front side of our house for a while.

I was afraid they would dive bomb me… using any means necessary, if you know what I mean. But they kept their distance.

(Now I know they were PLOTTING.)

Eventually, they moved around the back of house. There’s a sliding door from our kitchen to our porch, and the door has an electric awning above it. The sparrows built a nest in the awning mechanism.

When my dad visited a few weeks later, he pulled down the nest. (No eggs or babies, THANK GOD.)

But they just built a new one.

My husband and I resigned ourselves to the mess below the nest – feathers, sticks, grass, and bird goo – and the NOISE (scratching, feather ruffling, constant, un-ending chirping), and, of course, the hysterical frenzy of flapping whenever we dared to set foot onto our porch.

But we felt that we’d reached some sort of equilibrium with the sparrows. That we didn’t necessarily like each other, but we were willing to share the world for a time.

But the cease fire didn’t last, Internet.

Oh no. They were bound and determined to get me where it hurt.

But that’s a sad, sad story for another day.

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