Guess what!?
Baby mocking birds!
I know the picture's fuzzy, because I took it from inside through the window screen. And because I had to crop it and enlarge it. And because, well, baby birds are fuzzy after all. But I swear to god, look: baby mocking birds!
Mama MB brings them down and parks them in the pussy willow every morning, and they sit there cheeeep-cheeeeping all day (they sound like a rusty hinge) while she brings them bug after bug after bug after bug. Johnny has had to abandon his garden for the time being, because it's right next to the pussy willow and that Mocking Lady is one bear of a mama. She chased Johnny, squawking, clear around the house (I meant she was squawking, but really they kind of both were), and when they got to the front he found his nuts and told her he was going to keep this six square feet of his own yard, thank you very much. She allowed as how that just might be okay, if he promised to fuck off every hour or so to let her pick up all the bugs he had unearthed.
Want to know a terrible family secret? My grandfather actually killed a mockingbird one time. It was a broody Mrs just like this one, and she was attacking my great-grandmother -- his 80-year-old mother -- in the yard for the same reason. Great-grammy couldn't run fast enough to get away, and she was bleeding and screaming, so Grampy ran over and swatted it off her and he probably broke her neck or something cuz she died. The bird, that is. My great-grammy lived for a whole bunch more years. Grampy felt so terrible about it, though, he cried. My mother saw him.
His tears did nothing to stop the juju coming down, which I believe afflicts me to this day, but the thought of them do make me badger Johnny every morning: "Don't you dare raise a pinky to that bird or you'll be sorry!" Not that he ever would. Not even if she came for me. Probably not even if I bled and screamed.
Guess what else?
I got the drawer open!
Know how? I pulled the handle really-really hard.
Seriously.
See, I used the last check in my register last week sometime, and yesterday I had a bill I had to pay. The new checks were stuck in the drawer, so I had no choice but to try a new approach (a new approach besides ignoring the problem, that is to say). So I got down on my knees on the floor, took out the drawers above and below the stuck one, and just sort of puzzled the whole thing over for a moment. Then I thought "I don't feel like doing this. Why doesn't it work if I just give it one good WHOA!" And fell over backwards with the no-longer-stuck drawer in my lap.
I don't know. It's not like I didn't give it a whole bunch of good pulls the last time I went through this. And a couple decent kicks to boot.
Guess what else?
I honestly don't know why, but Johnny wanted me to show you this:
It's the peels and ends and leaves and middles off a half a pound of celery. I peeled a half a pound of celery and broke it up for snacks for Someone I Love Dearly Who Is Really Very Ill. I brought the celery ends-'n'-things home in a bag for Johnny as a sort of half a joke, saying they were for him to boil up in stock.
I say "half" a joke because I knew that -- while I was indeed joking -- he would in fact find some good use for them. And I was right. He washed and soaked the lot, gave one really good leafy bit to Girl Cat, and threw the rest in the bottom of a baking dish to throw a casserole on top of. And I guess he thought that base-layer looked purdy enough to commemorate.
Guess what else?
I have to go to the RMV tomorrow.
Bleah.
4 comments:
This weekend I fed a baby blue jay worms and blue berries and stinky wet cat food for 3 days almost every 20-30 minutes til it died. I think it was the almost that got him. Those baby birds are work, I'll tell ya. No wonder that mocking bird is so pissed at Johnny for invading her space.
Just go ahead and pick that green tomato and fry it, already.
Is there some kind of rule where you get bad luck for killing a mocking bird? We don't have them here so must be something I'm unaware of.
I was strangely excited you got the drawer open. Then I realised that must mean you never followed my brilliant suggestion on how to resolve it and decided to only give really bad suggestions from hereon in.
There are Blackbirds in the back fence and Blue Tits in the Apple Tree. The Back garden has been taken over by about fifteen birds of varying species. They keep the pigeons away (but not the pair of wood pigeons - which aim to be cute). I suspect this is a return, in the Dinosaur Human balance of the world, to a situation where the saurians are in charge. Especially since the Blackberries are all, officially, the property of the blackbirds. Or the Robin Red Breast (small but very violent) or the Wren.
I never saw the point of mock birds when you could have a real one.
Jenni -- Wow. You are some kind of dedicated. Almost. (An actual nor'easter blew through here last night. If that green tomato is still on the vine, I think it might be breakfast.)
12 -- Oh, yes. It's a sin to kill a mockingbird. Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mocking bird.
Hubert -- Black, blue, red, brown... you have a veritable avian rainbow going in your yard! Or else just a world-class doozy of a bruise...
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