I’ve freed the first starling from a downspout, the hens have resumed laying, the peepers are loud at night, the horses are leaning over the field fences for that sweet, green grass on the lawn side. Yes, readers, spring is here. We actually didn’t have much of a winter here; most of our snow and the coldest days occurred in November rather than January and February. I will take full credit for the mild winter, as I believe the mild temperatures are attributable to the fact that I laid in a good supply of firewood at the end of November. It did get cold enough to make me look like an ass to the horses when their trough froze over because I couldn’t find the heater. I pulled it last spring and put it . . . you guessed it . . . in a very safe place. I’m sure I’ll come across it in July or so.
Spring won’t really have arrived until the sparrows begin invading our chimney and getting trapped in the woodstove. Nothing like waking up to the sounds of “thrash, thrash, flutter, thump,” I’ll tell you what. Fortunately, Dr. Evil and I have perfected the choreography of Freeing the Sparrows: cat goes in a closed room, I open windows and doors downstairs, Dr. Evil does the same upstairs, then stand to the side of the stove and open the door. Oh, how the hijinx do ensue.
This year the starlings have given us a new treat: getting caught in the attic space. They have been flocking to (heh, get it? flocking?) a vent on the tall side of the house, directly over the outside stairs to the basement, which renders it effectively—hmm, lemme do some calculations . . . two thousand feet off the ground—such that even if I had a ladder that would reach such great heights, there’s no way I would climb that sumbitch. Lately, I’ve seen some fiberglass insulation strewn across the side yard, which is weird, because our house has either rigid foam or cellulose insulation. Puzzling, until I receive this series of text messages from Dr. Evil:
All that insulation? They weren’t nesting in the vent, they were plucking insulation from the vent pipe, and I guess they plucked a little too much and ::thud:: one fell through the hole and got stuck in the attic space. Bats in the belfry got nuthin on starling in the attic. We need to learn a new choreography for this event, because it wasn’t nearly as smooth. Or, I guess I could put some mesh on the vent opening, but where’s the fun in that?
One last bird story before I post this avian anthology. You may recall that we lost hens to skunks and a raccoon last year. In a stunning display of revenge, he remaining two got all kindsa medieval on a mouse that dared enter their run. I was checking on them the other morning and saw a small gray bit amongst the ground litter, and sure enough, my girls did a tap dance all over intruding Jerry. I thought about putting his head on a tiny pike as a warning to others but opted not to.
That’s it for now.