over at Chez Tweet, we have a trio of purple-headed finch regulars--a momma bird and her two mostly-grown babies. it is the ultimate goal of this momma bird to teach her two youngsters that they can, in fact, eat birdseed without any assistance; but they are resisting this lesson with great zeal. each day at mealtime they flutter their wings and open their mouths to beg, even as the momma bird is pointing at the feeder and saying, "look! look it's right here you little losers! fly up here and get some! don't make me come down there!"
to understate the case, they are terribly cute.
Saturday morning* i awoke to learn that Chez Tweet's kitchen was closed due to insufficient vittles. and there, sitting in a tidy row on the porch rail, was the Finch Family--patiently awaiting breakfast. "Very well," i said. "I'll just refill the feeder, then." with that, i flipped the lock and drew aside the glass door. two of the three birds scattered, but one fat little baby held its ground. "You're very brave," i told it, "but the moment I open the screen door you're going to take off too, I bet." **
as per usual, this was Spainy-cat's cue to trot into the living room. she positioned herself underneath the coffee table and twitched her haunches, licking her chops and narrowing her eyes like a half-starved dingo--as if she doesn't have a freaking BUCKET of food mere feet away. but you never know. this could be the day she slips past the defenses and nabs a tasty baby bird fritter. hope springs eternal in that furry little breast.
vigilance springs eternal in mine. we're up on the third floor, and i didn't want to spend my saturday afternoon scraping up a cat pancake off my neighbor's patio. therefore i swung a warning foot around to make sure the kitty wasn't close enough to lunge when the final barrier to Chez Tweet was withdrawn. satisfied that she was well out of the way, i slid the screen back and cringed to hear its customary screech of metal-on-metal. still the baby bird sat and stared with its beady black eyes. "Hmmm....i hope you're not sick or something," i said.
as if to reassure me that this was not the case, the baby bird launched itself like a bottle rocket directly at my forehead.
i ducked.
what? what else was i supposed to do? if a feathered bullet the size of a plum comes zipping at a soft spot between your eyes--what do YOU do? eh? if you've got any instinct for self-preservation--or for that matter any desire not to have your face aerated--you DUCK, okay?
of course this meant that within 0.02 seconds the baby bird was actually inside my living room.
i'm pretty sure that my feline companion had a contingency plan for just this sort of occasion. i bet this contingency plan could be laid out as follows: (a). leap like a gazelle (b). swat birdie out of the air with a mighty paw (c). devour birdie on the spot, before useless humans have a chance to stop me. but the next events unfolded in a slightly different order.
about 0.01 seconds after the bird initially crossed the threshold into the apartment, my graceful feline companion leaped up so fast and so hard that she brained herself on the underside of the coffee table. then the plan staggered forward more like this: (a). topple gracelessly into the middle of the floor, (b). stumble around for a second shaking head back and forth while trying to uncross eyes and (c). wonder where the hell that little bird went.
as for me--i raced back and forth between the storage hall, bedroom and bathroom and shut all the doors--thinking it would be better to contain the tiny invader than let it get lost in my closet or something. of course i had no choice but to leave the screen door open, lest the small trespasser try to get out and fail; but this meant that the kitty needed to be stashed elsewhere. i reached for the cat and picked her up around her middle. it was this precise moment, when i had all the sharp ends of a cat hovering around my belly button, that the baby bird decided it was time to start exploring. he† soared free from his perch on the book case and started making a series of loops between the front door and the couch--and no kitty of mine was going to take this sitting down...or suspended, as the case may be. she writhed free of my grip and dropped ass-first to the carpet, leaving skid-marks in her frantic efforts to charge the birdie.
but i should probably mention that the cat's fervor--even the cat's presence--seemed to have no effect on the baby bird whatsoever. he flew at an insultingly leisured pace, checking the sites, taking some pictures, reminding himself of things to mention when he updated his livejournal...you know. if you could accuse any bird of "moseying," it would be this guy. but luckily this birdie had the good sense to stick to the airspace within a foot of the ceiling, and the cat trailed along behind him like a child who had lost control of a kite but was determined not to let go.
after about a minute and a half the birdie decided it had done enough sight-seeing for one day and made for the porch once more. with a poof of feathers he left the way he had come...and my cat, having channeled her inner cheetah, went galloping along after it.
"noooooooooo!" i said--in slow motion, just like in a movie--and i did a soccer-goalie dive that put my chest between the cat and a whole lotta hang time. face-first my precious puss bored into my solar plexus, nearly knocking the wind out of me. hey, it was twelve pounds of cat running about forty miles an hour. you've got to expect to take some damage from that.
as for the kitty, she is fine except for a small bump on her head that she's groomed until it's greasy; and as for the birdie, he has since returned to Chez Tweet for the blue plate special, so i know he's not too traumatized by his glimpse of humanity and felinity. as for me, i've taken to shutting the kitty in the bedroom before i open the way to the balcony, so i think we've all learned some valuable lessons from this.
also, i have wasted almost an hour at work telling you about it, so i'd better move along now unless i want to learn a lesson about employers and their wrath regarding non-productivity.
~w_w~
* it would be more accurate to say, "Saturday afternoon, around 12:30 or 1:00...."
** feel free to consider this snippet of dialogue to be an example of "foreshadowing."
† male pronoun for convenience, since i'm dealing with a female cat
to understate the case, they are terribly cute.
Saturday morning* i awoke to learn that Chez Tweet's kitchen was closed due to insufficient vittles. and there, sitting in a tidy row on the porch rail, was the Finch Family--patiently awaiting breakfast. "Very well," i said. "I'll just refill the feeder, then." with that, i flipped the lock and drew aside the glass door. two of the three birds scattered, but one fat little baby held its ground. "You're very brave," i told it, "but the moment I open the screen door you're going to take off too, I bet." **
as per usual, this was Spainy-cat's cue to trot into the living room. she positioned herself underneath the coffee table and twitched her haunches, licking her chops and narrowing her eyes like a half-starved dingo--as if she doesn't have a freaking BUCKET of food mere feet away. but you never know. this could be the day she slips past the defenses and nabs a tasty baby bird fritter. hope springs eternal in that furry little breast.
vigilance springs eternal in mine. we're up on the third floor, and i didn't want to spend my saturday afternoon scraping up a cat pancake off my neighbor's patio. therefore i swung a warning foot around to make sure the kitty wasn't close enough to lunge when the final barrier to Chez Tweet was withdrawn. satisfied that she was well out of the way, i slid the screen back and cringed to hear its customary screech of metal-on-metal. still the baby bird sat and stared with its beady black eyes. "Hmmm....i hope you're not sick or something," i said.
as if to reassure me that this was not the case, the baby bird launched itself like a bottle rocket directly at my forehead.
i ducked.
what? what else was i supposed to do? if a feathered bullet the size of a plum comes zipping at a soft spot between your eyes--what do YOU do? eh? if you've got any instinct for self-preservation--or for that matter any desire not to have your face aerated--you DUCK, okay?
of course this meant that within 0.02 seconds the baby bird was actually inside my living room.
i'm pretty sure that my feline companion had a contingency plan for just this sort of occasion. i bet this contingency plan could be laid out as follows: (a). leap like a gazelle (b). swat birdie out of the air with a mighty paw (c). devour birdie on the spot, before useless humans have a chance to stop me. but the next events unfolded in a slightly different order.
about 0.01 seconds after the bird initially crossed the threshold into the apartment, my graceful feline companion leaped up so fast and so hard that she brained herself on the underside of the coffee table. then the plan staggered forward more like this: (a). topple gracelessly into the middle of the floor, (b). stumble around for a second shaking head back and forth while trying to uncross eyes and (c). wonder where the hell that little bird went.
as for me--i raced back and forth between the storage hall, bedroom and bathroom and shut all the doors--thinking it would be better to contain the tiny invader than let it get lost in my closet or something. of course i had no choice but to leave the screen door open, lest the small trespasser try to get out and fail; but this meant that the kitty needed to be stashed elsewhere. i reached for the cat and picked her up around her middle. it was this precise moment, when i had all the sharp ends of a cat hovering around my belly button, that the baby bird decided it was time to start exploring. he† soared free from his perch on the book case and started making a series of loops between the front door and the couch--and no kitty of mine was going to take this sitting down...or suspended, as the case may be. she writhed free of my grip and dropped ass-first to the carpet, leaving skid-marks in her frantic efforts to charge the birdie.
but i should probably mention that the cat's fervor--even the cat's presence--seemed to have no effect on the baby bird whatsoever. he flew at an insultingly leisured pace, checking the sites, taking some pictures, reminding himself of things to mention when he updated his livejournal...you know. if you could accuse any bird of "moseying," it would be this guy. but luckily this birdie had the good sense to stick to the airspace within a foot of the ceiling, and the cat trailed along behind him like a child who had lost control of a kite but was determined not to let go.
after about a minute and a half the birdie decided it had done enough sight-seeing for one day and made for the porch once more. with a poof of feathers he left the way he had come...and my cat, having channeled her inner cheetah, went galloping along after it.
"noooooooooo!" i said--in slow motion, just like in a movie--and i did a soccer-goalie dive that put my chest between the cat and a whole lotta hang time. face-first my precious puss bored into my solar plexus, nearly knocking the wind out of me. hey, it was twelve pounds of cat running about forty miles an hour. you've got to expect to take some damage from that.
as for the kitty, she is fine except for a small bump on her head that she's groomed until it's greasy; and as for the birdie, he has since returned to Chez Tweet for the blue plate special, so i know he's not too traumatized by his glimpse of humanity and felinity. as for me, i've taken to shutting the kitty in the bedroom before i open the way to the balcony, so i think we've all learned some valuable lessons from this.
also, i have wasted almost an hour at work telling you about it, so i'd better move along now unless i want to learn a lesson about employers and their wrath regarding non-productivity.
~w_w~
* it would be more accurate to say, "Saturday afternoon, around 12:30 or 1:00...."
** feel free to consider this snippet of dialogue to be an example of "foreshadowing."
† male pronoun for convenience, since i'm dealing with a female cat
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