Lost and Found

The girls and I have been enjoying a new pastime....bird watching! I was so upset about having a dinky little backyard which backs up to everyone else's dinky little backyard, that I set about immediately trying to turn it into a miniature paradise. Rodney cringed as a spent precious money on trees, shrubs, and mulch. But he protested when I bought THREE birdfeeders (WHAT?! Your mother bought ANOTHER one? WHY?!) He definitely did not understand the logic of essentially pouring money into 3 feeders and watch them being quickly drained. I mean, we were already spending hard earned cash on a huge outside dog, a cockatiel, a canary, and our recent acquisitions: two dwarf hamsters. Why, he wondered, would we now commense to feeding wild animals also? When I purchased the bird-house-on-a-stick, he really thought I had lost it.

"Didn't we already have two birdhouses?"

"They aren't the right kind and I don't have a pole."

*Long, drawn-out sigh*

I AM feeding a few too many Brewer's Blackbirds at the feeders. (dang greedy varmits!) But now the birdhouse is paying off. We have a beautiful momma and daddy tree swallow raising a family! It is so much fun to watch them taking turns going in and out of their little house. The daddy sits on our fence to watch out for lurking dangers and actually covers the hole to protect his babies when he senses danger is near! (Even if it IS just me with a garden hose watering two nearby raspberry vines.) He will allow you to get quite near before he flies into the birdhouse so Michelle took some great photos of him from just three or four feet away. I wondered out loud why we have never made a bird sanctuary before. Ah yes....because of "Shut-up."

Shut-up was our part-time cat in Jackson, GA. We did not adopt Shut-up; Shut-up adopted us. He really belonged to, what Becca called, our "back-door" neighbor...but he never went "home". When he first starting living on our front porch, he would meow constantly, a loud bawling meow, to get us to pick him up, give him attention, and feed him. My easily irritated daughter, Vickie, promptly named him "SHUT-UP"!!! The name stuck. Shut-up in some ways was more like a dog; he would show his affection by licking you on your face and he loved your attention. Everyone agreed he was the perfect cat.

When the time for our move to Cincinnati area was quickly coming, we were debating what to do with Shut-up. Rodney said legally the cat still belonged to the "back-door" neighbors so we would have to ask permission if we took him. Since we were going to live in an apartment for a least a couple of months we were also debating where we would put Shut-up; Rodney is allergic to cats in the house. But, alas, the decision was made for us. Just a week before Rodney left for Cincinnati, the girls heard a commotion in the front yard and found, to their horror, that the "back-door" neighboring kids where trying to catch Shut-up and put him in a carrier. When they asked why, the neighboring kids said that they were moving in the morning and taking their cat with them! My girls came in crying. They said "Momma, don't let them take him - Shut-up hates them!" But I pointed out to them, while that was true, that Shut-up wouldn't be living with them anyhow. He was a smart cat and would find another family like us that he liked better and live with them! They agreed....but we all still miss Shut-up.

However, if we still had Shut-up, we would NOT have birds. Shut-up was quite the efficient bird hunter. It was the only thing I DIDN'T like about Shut-up. Along with the offerings of a freshly killed mouse on our welcome mat, we also would find a clump of tail feathers. Yuck. So we have found that one door being slammed shut often opens another one. We lost the best cat in the world...sad thing. But we have gained a new-found love of turning our soon-to-be-miniature-backyard- paradise into a bird and butterfly sanctuary. The liquid twittering of our new tree swallow family is a healing balm.