- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
This Blog Is For The Birds
Our cat Patches likes routine. She has little rituals that she follows and expects The Laps -- that's my wife and I -- to follow. Frankly, she's like a little general.
One of these routines is that every morning when we let her out of her room in the basement -- actually it is more of a kitty condo complete with endless buffet, various places to snooze and a nice view of the outdoors -- she wants her tour of the backyard before she comes back in for breakfast consisting of Purina Cat Chow.
Patches' primary points of interest in our yard are the two bird feeders that attract a variety of birds and the highly-determined squirrels who live in our elm trees. Since we don't particular want Patches' catching a bird or tackling with a squirrel, when she goes out, so do I.
I make my rounds to verify that no wildlife is foraging on the ground beneath the feeders and if they are there, to shoo them away.
Really, the only reason I feel compelled to be essentially a backyard foot soldier for General Patches is because of the several mourning doves that like to congregate in our backyard for the feed.
Mourning doves are fat birds, and because of their weight they couldn't eat at our squirrel-resistant bird feeders even if they wanted to. A door closes over the feeding trough if too much weight -- such as an obese mourning dove or a scavenging squirrel -- tries to sit on it.
But the mourning doves don't appear to mind. They seem quite happy to waddle around beneath the feeders scrounging up bits of black-oil sunflower seeds that have been dropped or raked out of the feeders by some other bird.
I've observed these birds for many years and I've noticed something about mourning doves.
They are like the Forrest Gump of the bird community. They are oblivious to almost everything until the very last second.
"Momma always said life is like a feeder full of black-oil sunflower seeds. You never know what might fall to the ground."
I'm not really sure what General Patches would exactly do if she ever caught one of the mourning doves. She would probably try to lug it up to the porch like she did with a songbird last summer. Of course, the songbird was an eighth of the size of the mourning doves.
That bird got lucky and managed to escape when I picked up Patches. It helps that the General is ticklish.
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