Thursday, May 26, 2005

 

A CARDINAL WITH A SEX PROBLEM



I have a slight headache involving a sex-starved cardinal.

A cardinal who was apparently last in line for donations from the gene pool is beating her silly brains out against my plate-glass window which looks out over the Shenandoah Valley.

Yes, I know what they say when cardinals (or redbirds) attack their reflections in windows and wheel covers on cars: They're attacking what they perceive to be a rival, plus there's likely a nest nearby.

Conventional wisdom doesn't apply in this case.

This is a female. Dowdy sort of character, totally without the brilliant red of the male (wherever he may be). I have concluded that she isn't battling her reflection at all, but suspects the dog and I have the most handsome male in birddom inside the house. And she wants a piece of him.

This ol' gal is as determined as a girlfriend I used to have who tracked me all the way to Dump Truck, Ala., where she ran me to ground, then left me three days later with a hangover of heroic porportions and several tattoos that I did not authorize.

Even as I write from another room, I can hear her tapping the window with her sizeable beak. Occasionally, she backs up and gets a flying run, then smashes into the plate glass. Such non-stop efforts leave icky traces of bird feathers so thick it's beginning to obscure my view of the Valley.

This foolishness is in its second day, and I can't Windex the plate glass often enough to keep down the accumulation of bird feathers. At the rate of 1,500 jumps against the window a day, she will have lost all her protective coating and look like a defeathered small duck by Memorial Day.

'Ees a problem.

I could always hang up my paper-mache owl with the big yellow eyes on the inside of the glass, but I'm afraid that will put the fear of the Lord into the hummingbirds who feed from a hanging feeder on the porch six or eight feet away. Hate to lose the hummingbirds because of one air-head, over-sexed cardinal.

Excuse me for a moment. She just abandoned the big plate glass and is now trying to get into the office window where I'm typing.

Mother used to run off everything from stray dogs to drunks with judicious swings of a broom.

It's worth a try....

END

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