Something to chirp about

My wife Kara has a special connection with nature. She’s like one of those animal whisperers who get their own shows on the Discovery Channel. Just this morning, as several birds were enthusiastically chirping in the maple tree outside our window before the sun came up, I witnessed the beauty of Kara speaking directly with the natural world.

“Shut up!” she said to nature.

“Caw! Caw! Chirp chirp chirp,” nature replied.

“I can’t sleep. They never shut up. Can you sleep?” she asked me.

“Not anymore,” I said. Even if the birds perched on my forehead, pecked at my cheeks and cooked Belgian waffles with canned whipped cream on my nightstand, I could probably still sleep through it. They’d have to start a death metal band in our maple tree to wake me up. Incidentally, a really good death metal band name for them would be “Cardinal Sin.”

But Kara can’t ignore the birds because she’s so attuned to nature that she just lies there in bed interpreting birdsong. Apparently, they’re saying, “WAKE UP! WAKE UP! And wake your husband up, too.”

Several years ago, my buddy Josh gave us a bird feeder as a housewarming present, which I left in the basement until just before his next visit a year later. On that Friday, he called from the road to say: “We’re going to be there in fifteen minutes, and if that bird feeder isn’t out of the box yet, I’m taking it and cramming it up the first orifice I find.”

“Dude, I told you already. I hung it in the backyard months ago,” I replied. Then I dusted off the box from the basement, ran out to the backyard and hung that thing from a branch just in time to avert an invasive anterior birdfeederoplasty. That’s where the feeder has stayed ever since, and it’s been empty since about that Sunday evening. As it turns out, Josh didn’t get us a bird feeder at all; he accidentally got us a squirrel feeder. To turn a squirrel feeder into a bird feeder, you need booby traps and laser beams and axle grease, and I just haven’t put in the time to formulate a proper strategy for doing so, mainly because it seems like the birds out there are doing just fine without our help, especially around 4am, when they begin to gather for their conversation with my wife, the bird screamer.

My parents have successfully converted a couple squirrel feeders into bird feeders in their front yard, using techniques that they’ve perfected over the last couple of decades. There are more trap doors and obstacles around those feeders than there were in the last event of American Gladiators. Still, the squirrels never give up, trying the same unsuccessful tactics over and over again like they think they’ve been elected president.

My parents’ success at creating a happening place for cute little birdies to hang out hasn’t gone unnoticed a little higher up the food chain. As Mom ate breakfast recently, a hawk swooped down and snatched a bird off the feeder. Mom did the only thing a moderately sane person could do, which is to go out in the yard and yell at the hawk as it enjoyed its breakfast high up in a tree. As someone who has received a fair amount of discipline from Mom, the only advice I might offer is that next time she try the “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed in you” talk. That hawk would never touch another bird again, at least not until it went to college.

Anyway, be sensitive about the bird situation when you visit my folks. Mom doesn’t think it’s funny when you ask how her hawk feeders are doing.

You can push Mike Todd out of the nest online at mikectodd@gmail.com.