Dear diary,
I realize that it’s been a while since I wrote a straightforward entry about what’s been going on in my day-to-day life. So I’ll try to do that now…
We’ve been obeying the strict order to stay at home (on account of the plague), ever since March 11; and now it’s June 14; so that’s about three months of indoor fun, so far. We only leave the house once per day to go on a walk or a bike ride. (Daily exercise is an activity that was permitted by our state’s regulations, which were of course cosigned by the virus itself.) Yet since my bike is in need of a tune-up — its tires are bald from excessive use and thus need to be changed, plus everything about my bike that should be tight has now grown loose; like, for instance, its braking system — and I’m afraid to take the bike into a store to get it serviced (bike service shops have been deemed “essential businesses” by our state’s wise council, so they’re all “open”, but I’m currently still too paranoid to engage in that level of commercial interaction, unless it’s a matter of life-and-death, which biking is not), I say, therefore, instead of biking, we’ve mostly been just walking around the streets of our suburban neighborhood, where nothing wild happens. But the tame things that happen are well worth reporting — they’re actually far eerier than the wild things — so I regret not reporting them when they were still fresh occurrences, unfermented by my memory.
The most terrifying thing that has happened in recent time, besides all the social unrest of this historical moment, is that some songbirds built a nest in our front door. We have an ugly front door that we planned to replace when we moved here, but then this plague struck and now none of us have any money, so the ugly door remains; thus we tried to pretty it up a little — as the cliché goes, to “put some lipstick on the pig” — by displaying a cheap wreath that we bought for two hapennies (which is equal to one whole penny) from a local farmer. The wreath had been wrung around the neck of one of his goats, and I said, “I like that wreath; that would look good on our front door.” And the farmer said, “It’s yours, for two cents.” So I, being a master of the Art of the Deal, talked him down by saying “How about two half-cents?” And then we shook hands, signifying that I was now the proud owner of a wreath.
So anyway this wreath ended up on our front door, and now the door looks like an ugly door wearing a wreath. And then there were many mornings that passed where I could hear a suspiciously loud noise of a bird chanting neurotically outside our house’s entryway, but every time I’d open the door to curse the culprit, I could see no evidence of any construction work going on anywhere. This left me scratching my head in perplexity.
But then one day I came home from one of my boring neighborhood-walks, &, when I approached my house to go inside, a little songbird flew away from the upper left corner of the door-wreath; so I got out a step ladder and looked whence the soul had sprung; and, sure enough, there was a tawny nest lodged in-between the wreath itself and the storm door: it was using the wreath for support. And there was one tiny blue egg inside the nest.
So I did a little research about birds and nests and periods of gestation and fledging; and I decided that I’d let the nest remain — the whole ordeal of birth and childrearing should be finished in about a month, the encyclopedia assured me; therefore I sent out my official decree: “The bird can stay.”
Then several days later we looked at the nest again, this time from inside the house — for the nest is in a nook of the wreath that is resting against the storm door, which is made of transparent glass; so it’s easy to view: you can get your face about an inch away from the ongoings (now I actually regret not setting up a camera, to film what I witnessed; for, if there’s one thing the world does not have enough of, it’s egg-hatching videos); and what we saw within the nest was no longer just one little blue egg, but about six or seven little blue eggs. And right on top of all those eggs was a brown speckled egg, which was about twice as big.
So I did a little more research and tried to find out what that latter egg of different color and size was likely to be, but I couldn’t figure it out exactly — my best guess was that it was the egg of a parasite species that tricks other birds into feeding its offspring.
The next time we checked on the nest, there was one large fuzzy bird that had either fallen out or crept out of the nest (for it could not fly yet) and was positioned at the bottom of the wreath. The wreath itself was hung from the door in a way that allowed us to look thru the door’s spyhole, which presents a fish-eye view of the entrance, and see the inner part of the wreath’s material encircling the border of the spyhole’s perimeter; therefore this bird that had either left or been jettisoned from the nest appeared in the center of the view of the spyhole, whereas the nest was just out of shot, off beyond the upper right border (that’s when looking from inside — it’s at the top left when looking from the yard). So we could stand there staring in the spyhole and watch as the parent birds swooshed forth and landed to feed: first in the nest — overhead, out of view — and then often one or both would come down and land at the bottom of the wreath, on center stage, next to the fuzzy, awkward teen (that’s what the escaped youngling looked like to me — I’m talking about the ex-nestmate); and most of the time the parent birds would just stare at this odd bird, cock their head to either side, and then fly away without attending to it; but a few times we did see at least one of the parents feed the innocent intruder. And this low, strange, unkempt, invader was fat, so it must’ve been getting food from somewhere. This fuzzy teen would squeak all day — squeak, squeak, squeak — until a parent would arrive; and then it would throw back its head and open its beak real wide, and whimper at a fainter, higher pitch. And when a parent deigned to feed it, by disgorging food from its own mouth into the awkward youngster’s throat, the latter would increase the volume and rate of this whimpering, till the meal was over, at which time he or she would return to his or her regular squeak-routine.
Everything this center-stage bird would do was obsessive and repetitious. And it would grouchily reposition itself at the wreath-bottom periodically; and, when it did so, its movements would resemble a very old man, because it would put out its non-functioning wing-arms to balance its girth, and, as the wreath blew in the wind, it would move cautiously with tiny steps to the place of surest purchase; and it possessed a bulging belly, and its hair was a mess.
So we humans who live in this house have been avoiding using our front door, when we go out — we use the back door instead and just walk around the side of the house to the front, if we need to get to the street — because, if we were to open the storm door, the nest might fall out.
Yes, even tho I hate these birds, I’m too softhearted to bother them. Just cuz they’re my enemies doesn’t mean I want them dead. I just wish that they would hurry up and fledge, so they can fly away; then I can get rid of their nest. I shall trash the wreath too. Cuz when you look at our front door now, it’s covered from top to bottom in whitish bird-droppings. It’s amazing that such a small creature could make such a toxic waste-heap, in such little time.
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Well, that’s all I have time to write about this morning. I wanted to relay a lot of the other things that we’ve done in the recent weeks, but all that news will have to wait for some upcoming entry… or perhaps I’ll never get around to recording it. (I vote for the latter.)
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