My Feathered Friends: Writing Focus

One night as I was thinking about my writing, something I had not realized before about the subject matter I chose in poems and short reflections occurred to me. Events with my encounters with animals were exclusively those with feathers. Several incidents are recorded in various blog posts: robins, blue birds, chickens, turkeys and even one about a vulture.

Perhaps it all began with a young banty rooster, my pet when I lived on my grandparents farm when I was only three. I am not really a confirmed animal lover at all but a number of fowl came into my life and I found meanings in each encounter with them. In fact, one of those incidents happened a day or two ago when a small brown bird made a nest of moss in the glorious shocking pink hanging geranium plant visible through the sliding glass door to my back deck

I dread to admit I wanted to protect my plant (I am a plant lover) by removing the nest but my husband, a much more sensitive person toward bugs, birds etc., evoked a sense of guilt in me and I let it be. Every time I opened the door the little mommy or daddy bird would fly back and forth and sing frantically until I closed the door and hid myself from the parent birdie.

It was only two or three weeks later that I heard a rather perturbed song coming from the mother bird on my deck railing. She ( sorry about the pronoun but it had to be the mother) was telling one of her brood to leave the nest. She must have been exhausted with the care and feeding of the little ones.

I certainly understand that feeling especially with my daughter who kept us up literally every hour of the night for her first year of life. She wanted to nurse and her crying forced us to get up and then after nursing she would cry again and throw up. You can figure that out, but we were oblivious to why at the time. Her little tummy was too full. Finally I stopped nursing after one year and she slept all night,

Well now back to the poor mother exerting every effort even going in and flying out of the nest trying to teach the ‘kid’ to fly. I would check on the delema now and then and happened to see a tiny fluffy little thing tumble out and reach the ground after a wobbly flight.

To be continued!