Birds and Humans: Parallel Universes
The Private Lives of Birds
A family of birds lived in the wall of our house last Spring. They might have been wrens or sparrows. Small birds look alike to me from a distance.
They raised a brood of four most of which raising I missed out on since I am not willing to climb up to the second floor on the outside of the house. Besides, I wasn’t invited to their apartment and I have an aversion to crashing parties.
The part of their family life I did see involved the teenager birds, brash and adventurous. They chased each other from bush to tree to grass and back, stopping sporadically on the roof line where they made caustic comments about the passersby and their dogs.
Once, when the bird family was out running errands, I asked a handyman to close up the entrance. We figured the teens were old enough now to be on their own and the parents might be looking to downsize. The handyman stuffed some insulation material into the vacant hole and tacked a shingle over the entrance.
But later that week we found the shingle on the lawn. A day later long bits of insulation were scattered around the yard. The family simply settled back into their space as though they had assessed the new home makeover, found it lacking and decided to return the nest to its former decor.
This year, the little apartment is less popular.
A family stayed there briefly, maybe the same one. And a chickadee has been eyeing it recently. Any day now I expect to see a robin with some sparrow clients, hopping along the window ledge. He will expound on the virtues of the place. It’s air conditioned in Winter, warm in Summer, sturdy construction, safe from cats. They will counter with the negatives. The bedrooms are too small, the bathrooms need remodeling, there’s not enough storage and there are rumors of a maniac who wanders about the neighborhood stuffing houses with insulation.
Maybe the original family will come back one day for a family reunion. They will chatter about how the old neighborhood has changed. The adults will compare notes on trees they remember sitting in, delicious bugs they have found in the yard, and funny things the children did when they were young. They may even glance down at us humans occasionally, but without much interest.
We’re hardly worth paying attention to. We can’t fly and we all look alike.
Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.
