The robin’s nest

Turns out that a robin has signed up to use a decrepit birdhouse as a starter home. This is all fine except the house is missing its front wall and I am supposed to be the birdhouse and feeder reno-guy around here. Wouldn’t you know it, but robin jumped the gun moving in before I could find out where the front wall containing the appropriate entrance hole went. Of course, you know all about winter winds and how your stuff, from time to time, ends up in the neighbour’s yard three houses away.

Maybe the part I find hard to take is that I am easily reminded of the front wall complexity because the birdhouse is two feet away from the window where I enjoy the sun when it happens to shine in the morning: sun and morning coffee, capiche? So no ducking the issue, especially when I noticed a bikerbird- starling come around on a reconnaissance flight yesterday to see how robin was making out with the new digs. Biker bird standing on the birdhouse roof and bending over like a fisherman staring under the hull of his boat, imagining prey hidden in the depths is something I don’t want to know about: I do not want to imagine robin eggs in this picture: Especially in my face first thing in the morning.

I know, I know, it’s about nature’s workings and all of that but frankly, I’d rather be planting tulip bulbs than witnessing a battle between good and evil slowly unfold before my eyes. And how can I sit here in peace by my kitchen window and not have a guilt trip laid on me? Or want to intervene into what is reality in the natural world when, in truth, I’d rather stick my head in the sand and have the incident gone. Ever happen to you when you just want to look away and not want to admit to feeling like a useless ass in the course of watching events in nature take place that we know take place beyond our view every minute. So, I’m not afraid to admit that I am a wuss when it comes to nature’s cruelty.

Like the time I brought a mourning dove to the vet because it had been maimed. Or another time, when I ran into a field to break up a ritual encounter between two male pheasants. I mean, get over it, I hollered to them. There’s space for everyone. Relax!

And then there were other times like when a snapping turtle devoured our ducklings one at a time down by the river and when Mr. Bo Jangles, a fur person masking as my skunk-striped cat, caught a hare, which I then rushed to the vet (the hare this time). I mean, the vet was empathetic and patient and all of that. But after she explained the biological effect of cat teeth and skin punctures, that was enough for me to need a double martini at the end of day while I reiterated the teeth thing to Bo Jangles. You’d expect to see at least an iota of caring in his fat marble eyes when I announced he was now grounded and a litter box was in his future. He simply laid there in the sunset, as cats do. He even turned down the small bits of martini olives that we had long ago agreed to be an excellent dietary source of greens.

I’m just hoping that robin doesn’t take it personally when I go out there this morning and, having put the notion of retrieving the front panel of the birdhouse to the universe, I find and carefully install the thing. I mean, robin is going to have to adjust to the concept. Maybe she could gather not-so-wide building materials in order to manage a front door like most normal birds do. And as for biker bird and its lust for trashing other birds’ nests?

Seeing how this is a possibility, perhaps remote—yet it’ll unfold in front of my kitchen window if it does occur—I am not ready to abandon my morning sit-spot. I will know I have done my birdhouse maintenance best and will be able to sleep at night with a clear conscience. Knowing I can’t really intervene in nature’s course, I’m thinking that maybe a drawing of Mr Bo Jangles with a starling in a frying pan, a drawing incorporated into the roof of the bird house, might convey how I really feel about nest robbers. At least worth a try is what I figure.