Who ever said that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?

My husband just completed a four day mulching marathon, taking the time to weed and prune while he was so outdoorsy focused. Pretty admirable considering it’s been in the hundreds for days here in H-town. He told me that had downed 2.5 gallons of water on the hottest of the four days.

 

Me, I stayed indoors . . . I’m not much for heat these days. So I watched from my air conditioned sanctuary as, little by little, the mountain of mulch shrunk until it was finally gone, distributed amongst the plethora of flower beds my husband likes to tend. Oh sure, I kept going out there to check on him, to ask how hydrated he was keeping himself, to offer an occasional meal.

During one of my trips outside, he told me he’d accidentally knocked a nest of finches down from the palm tree in the back and how bad he’d felt watching as the parents panicked. The babies (there were two of them) were fully feathered but not quite ready for that maiden flight. He described how they flitted from branch to branch until they ended up in a low Nandina underneath the palm. During the course of the afternoon, the parents had adapted and kept bringing them food, albeit to their new location.

And here I have to switch topics and talk about my two Boston Terriers: Sampson and Piper. My dogs are sort of OCD in their own special way. Piper’s obsession is her Frisbee. She’d chase the thing until it grew legs and chased her back. And, unlike Sampson who thinks capturing the Frisbee is just the beginning of a game of keep-away, Piper will always bring it back. Then she’ll drop it onto your foot as a reminder that your job—and your only job—is to throw it again. And again. And again. And if you’re not paying attention, she’ll push it further and further up your leg until you remember what your job is.

   

But Sampson’s compulsion is border patrol (and you might have just figured out where this story is heading). He spends his time scouting the boundaries of “his” quarter acre lot, catching lizards and turning them into delicacies. He obviously hasn’t read the warnings of the potential toxicity of certain types of lizards. But then, Sampson has always eaten anything he can fit into his mouth. I’ve lost track of the number of times he’s made himself sick. But, like the toxicity warnings, Sampson seems equally clueless to the laws of cause and effect.

 

So I’m out there this afternoon (in the shade, mind you), sitting on my cushion and trying to find some OM time when I hear the familiar sound of my dog trying to pin some unsuspecting critter against the wall of the garage. But this time, there’s a lot of squawking and screeching that goes along with it and I know right away that it isn’t his typical prey… lizards don’t sound like that.

I give Samson the “leave it” command which he knows to obey. Then, unwrapping my crossed legs, I rush over to the bushes by the garage. By this time Piper has lost interest in her Frisbee and has joined in the fray. She decides to take over where Sampson left off and, while I’m snatching up one of the babies, she’s chasing down the second. I manage to get her off the poor thing before she gets it. Then, holding the screeching baby, I herd my two carnivores into the house, shutting them inside. 

Now I’ve got a bird in the hand but still one in the bush and I’m really not sure which is better. The parents are both freaking out as the baby I’m holding is squawking like there’s no tomorrow and I’m trying to decide what to do with it. I know the second baby is okay because I can hear it talking to its parents who’ve set up a tag team, one on me and the other on the second baby.

I stand there stymied for I don’t know how long. I mean, where do you put a two inch baby bird so that your idiot dogs don’t use it as a petit four? Finally I get a brilliant idea and decide to build a nest from an empty flower pot. My plan is to secure the pot to their native palm tree, high enough so the dogs can’t get them.

So I carry the pot and the bird into the front yard where there’s a bucket of dry stuff left over from yesterday’s pruning. The parent patrol is breathing down my neck as I single handedly fashion a crude nest in the bottom of the pot. But when I gingerly set the baby into its new nest, it pops back out in less than a nanosecond. Trying a bigger pot doesn’t work either… seems this kid is quite the little jumper! I’m thinking empty garbage can with those tall, tall sides. But I get to wondering if that might only set up a perfect opportunity for one of the neighbor’s cats.

    

Finally I decide on a new tactic. I figure they’d lasted all night in the Nandina so maybe they just need to go back there. I carry the little guy over and release him back into his bush. Then I tackle the job of snagging the second one which proves much harder than the first. I have to chase him back and forth, from one side of the garage wall to the other for about ten minutes before I finally pin him into a corner. Then I release him back into the Nandina too, watching as both parents worry nearby.

So as of right now I have no birds in the hand but two in the bush—which is all good. But the best part is that I also have none in my dog.