The fowl life of an ordinary Joe

Editor's note: Joe Sullivan is on vacation. This column was originally published May 8, 1998.

My wife and I are to the point that we don't like many wrinkles in our routine, but once in a while we get a jolt or two.

If someone asked me to describe my life, I would say that I have been very fortunate and very lucky, but on the whole I consider myself ordinary.

Which is to say I haven't won the lottery, which is hard to do if you don't buy a ticket. And no one has asked me to star in any movies about sinking ships. Not a single president has invited me to dinner at the White House. I've seen the queen of England up close, but she didn't speak to me. My travels have never included Antarctica. I rarely drive over the speed limit. I eat cereal for breakfast. My bedtime is early. I have the usual aches and pains for a man my age. My sight is correctable, and my hearing is -- well, I hear most of what I want to.

Yes, I'd say I'm rather ordinary.

And ordinary things happen to me.

For example, my lawn grows just about as fast as the neighbor's grass. I play golf occasionally and get to see men and women I admire hit really ugly shots just like mine. Friends from long ago check in from time to time, which usually is a pleasant experience. My wife and I have had the same summer vacation destination for so long that we qualify as officially registered sticks-in-the-mud. We buy the same brands every week at the grocery store because we like them. I no longer watch movies with Jim Carrey in them because I have not recovered from the suffering caused by the last two I sat through.

Given all this, you can imagine how even small events -- things that happen to other people all the time with little fanfare -- turn into Really Big Deals at our house.

Take bird-watching, for example.

There are some folks who are really serious bird-watchers. They keep logs and know how to focus their binoculars before feathered critters fly away. They know how to tilt their heads so their bifocals don't interfere with a clear view of a rare species.

My wife and I, though, are in that much larger group of bird-watchers who more appropriately would be called bird-feeders. We install a couple of feeding stations, fill them up and then sit in our recliners waiting for the birds to come looking for us. Heck, for all we know there are, among the fowl population, serious people-watchers who keep logs on the weird things they see through double-glazed panes.

But in the past couple of weeks, there have been a couple of bird-type visitors that neither of us have never seen before.

To speak plainly, we've had some excitement around our house.

The first special visitor was a small, finch-sized bird whose feathers were so deep blue that it almost hurt to look at it. Our bird book identified it as an indigo bunting. It has been a fairly regular visitor, although it doesn't hang around and loaf like most of the others.

Sitting on the patio a few nights ago, we noticed the mother cardinal making several trips to a part of the hedge about 15 feet from its nest. When our eyes finally focused, we realized it was feeding a young cardinal sitting on a limb. The youngster was about the size of the leaves on the branch.

At first, both parent cardinals went to the little ones and put food in their mouths. But on later trips, the older birds would stop a foot or so away, forcing the hungry redbirds-in-waiting to hop over to be fed.

Neither my wife nor I had ever seen a baby cardinal before. We went into a tizzy about that too.

As you can see, it doesn't take much to get us excited.

Yes, I'd say I'm just an ordinary Joe.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.