This past Sunday afternoon while we were out during our neighborhood garage sale, Madelyn decided to sit on our front porch. As she did, she noticed something a little different about our front door, particularly about the wreath placed upon the door. The wreath is made of faux twigs and berries (not those kinds!), but suddenly it had a lot more twigs. It turned out that a bird had built a nest at the top of our wreath and there were three newly hatched baby birdies inside (two visible here):
My girls were very excited. I was amazed. While we don't enter our house via the front door, we certainly have plenty of visitors coming in that way. That day alone, I had easily opened and closed (perhaps even slammed) that door six times because of guests dropping in. No one ever noticed the nest right in front of their face. Mama Bird must have secured her nest pretty well, too. I'm really surprised it stayed put.
Well, it did until last night. Jack was up late watching baseball and suddenly heard quite a commotion on our front porch. He went to the front window just in time to discover that an orange cat had found that a bird family had moved onto our front door. The cat made a giant leap towards the front door and took the entire wreath, nest and all, down with him in one big swoop. Jack tried to scare the cat away, but it was too late. All of the baby birdies perished in the attack.
Mama Bird was not around when the hungry kitty made its attack, but today she has been lingering around the house, sitting atop our deck and roof. In mourning, I guess. I was heartbroken to hear what had happened.
This morning I very delicately told my girls what had happened to the baby birdies. Their reactions, like everything else, could not have been more different. Cat-phobic Madelyn expressed fear and anger at the cat and riddled me with questions about it: whose cat was it, what did it look like, was it still outside, did Daddy get scratched in the attack, will it come back? After those questions were answered to her satisfaction, she proclaimed with dismay, Well, I guess we won't be famous for having a bird's nest on our front door. Sensitive yet silly Gabrielle immediately started crying upon hearing of the news. She kept shaking her head in disbelief and repeating, Those poor little chickens.
2 comments:
This is a very sweet story. Not that I think tragedies are sweet. But the fact that tragedies can rarely be avoided, yet sweetness and even comedy can still be present if you let it, is really how simple life really is.
I hope when I go out, I have as good of a punchline as those 'poor chickens'.
Yes, those poor little chickens. Gabrielle has such a tender heart.
I remember fondly having a cardinal nest outside our kitchen window when I was about seven. I can still remember very clearly watching the whole process.
The holly bush was large and covered much of our kitchen window but the kitchen was raised so we could look down into the nest. If we had opened that window I'm positive I would have been able to reach into the nest and pick up those eggs. But I got to see them from beginning to end. From the building of the nest, to the eggs, feeding babies, and back to the empty nest. I did not get to see them actually hatch or fly away. But one day they were all just gone.
Good memory, thanks for reminding me of it.
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