For those of you who know my father, you know what my childhood was like: full of nature and learning. He is a retired science/social studies teacher, so my summers were spent forming bug/leaf/rock/shell collections, and learning the names of every animal/vegetable/mineral.
These experiences formed wonderful memories and now make me yearn for my life to again be so peaceful yet exciting. I just wish I could force my fat ass back up into a tree, but, for the sake of the tree, I will remain grounded and try to fill my children's minds full of these experiences the best I can. There is only one problem, if you don't use it, you lose it. So it will be a careful experiment.
Maybe it's the generation, but my kids want nothing to do with this experiement. Addicted to the television and videogame system, they are the opposite of what I once was. Instead of whipping them to get them to come inside, I practically have to put an electric socket outside to get them to leave the house.
This summer, I decided, will be different. It all started with one wonderful discovery and ended with 3 strong anxiety attacks. The horrible story follows:
In an attempt to get my own butt outside, I took on gardening. I labored over a root infested plot of soil in front of my porch and planted a mixture of annual and perinneal flowers. The only thing I know about the planting and growing of flowers at this point is that you dig a hole, plop the thing into the ground, cover it with the dirt you removed, and give it water. With any luck at all, the roots will take, and you will not kill the plants.
I planted lillies and petunias, and some other things I can't remember the name of, and gave it all the love I could. After this planting, I decided on some hanging foliage to take the attention from the rest of the rotting porch. I hung 4 baskets of various colored petunias to match those I planted in the ground, assuming those survive my ignorance of the whole thing.
Two days later, I noticed the fluttering of birds around the blue hanging project. I realized that I would soon have a perfect chance to wrestle my kids outside and have them experience one of the most wonderful parts of springtime and nature. Sure enough, two more days later, I checked and found a perfectly constructed large robin nest.
I looked up robins on the net, to give myself a much needed refresher course on the subject. I wanted to completely interest my kids in the whole ordeal, because robins are such a wonderful bird, symbolic of the start of the most perfect season of the year, springtime.
And it is an interesting bird, at least to me-- they're much more interesting than their morning songs and their red breasts. They mate and remain mates until the chicks leave the nest. They share duties of the nest, including sitting on the eggs, and feeding the chicks. They usually lay 4 eggs. They keep laying until they have a total of four, and they won't sit on their eggs until the fourth is laid, to avoid the eggs hatching at diffferent times. Did you know the white part of bird poop is actually bird pee? Okay, so maybe it's not that interesting, but the kids found it fascinating.
We waited patiently, and finally, 3 eggs appeared in the nest one morning. Mommy was still out screwing around with Daddy, in order to produce the last of their offspring together. The next day, the 4th egg arrived, and after that, either Mom or Dad would remain on their nest, relieving each other for meals.
Olivia was obsessed with the whole thing, telling perfect strangers about our neighbors in the petunia basket. She would wait for anyone to acknowledge her presence and then erupt into a detailed story about the chicks who would arrive in a matter of weeks.
Although one fourth of my hanging basket experiment would have to be forfieted for the ordeal, it was turning out to be quite the learning experience. After a week without water, the flowers hung over the edge of their basket wilted, and begging for their lives. It was a small sacrifice to make for a huge educational gain.
10 days later, 2 days earlier than expected, I noticed a commotion outside my window upon waking. Mommy was perched on the side of her nest with a worm in her beak. This meant only one thing. I gathered the kids and waited for her to go for refills. I lowered her nest to peeking level, and sure enough, 3 sleeping babies were present.
I explained to my children how important it was to not bother the family of birdies. We decided to keep a photo journal instead of all of us bothering them and scaring the bird pee out of them. I snapped a quick picture of the 3 siblings and replaced the basket before Mommy returned.
The kids were very polite. Only once did I catch Isaac balancing on 3 porch chairs in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the family. After that they were content with viewing our slideshow on the computer. We even discussed putting the pics on the net so they could share it with their classmates.
The second day, I again waited for my chance to see if egg #4 had hatched. Sure enough, there were 4 baby robins, necks stretched, and beaks wide open. One much smaller than the rest. I snapped picture #2. I also snapped a picture of Mommy keeping a sharp eye on our adventure. In order to not disrupt the balance of nature, we decided a picture every two days would suffice.
A week after our babies started hatching, Brandon went to North Carolina and took the camera with him. I assumed, realizing how quickly the babies had grown between days 4 and 6, that they would be gone from the nest by the time the camera could capture any more pictures of them. Day 11 (Monday) arrived, and Brandon was home. I went outside excited to find that the chicks were still in the nest, although they barely fit anymore.
This is where the horror begins. This is truly unsuitable for young children. Shit. It's unsuitable for me.
I went inside to grab the camera, and went back out to find a good angle to snap the picture without freaking out the chicks; it had been 5 long days since I'd bothered them. I grabbed the ladder, and managed to scale to the top without being noticed. From about 5 feet away, I lifted the camera to my eye. That's when the reaction occurred. One by one, over a split second, they spotted me and took what would have been flight, had they been about 3 days older.
Instead, two of the 4 smacked flat into the neighbor's siding and shat all over themselves. The 3rd managed to luckily glide to the ground and take cover in a tulip bed. The fourth was either smarter or he was just not aware of the presenting situation, because he remained safely in the nest.
All wit and adult reason left my brain at that moment. I realized what I had done and panicked. As I would expect my 6 year old to do, I proceeded to tiptoe after the only now visible robin chick in an attempt to undo what had just happened. In that particular second, I figured all would be okay if I just returned all the terrified chickies to the safety of their home and all would be forgotten.
This turned out to be even more disasterous. The chickie hopped away from me straight to the backyard, right toward the open, panting, dripping mouths of my two dogs. In an attempt to cut him off before the inevitable happened, he turned and jumped through the fence, into the neighbor's yard, with their beagle.
Now, granted, the chick had more of a chance of survival in their yard, as it was one on one over there, and the beagle is approximately 150 in people years. The worst thing it has to offer is a horrific howl/bark, unless you are within 3 feet of it, where it can actually see you. Then you might have a problem, that is, if you are a baby bird.
Of course this is exactly where the bird retreated to. I'm only assuming it wasn't noticed because the dog is so near to death, it resembles a cement porch frog. I don't know. I let out a little scream in my head and went to check on the progress of the other two poor babies.
Neither of them were visible, and much to my dismay, they didn't learn how to take flight in the last 5 minutes and return themselves to their nest. This is when I went inside and had my first anxiety attack.
Several hours later, Brandon got home from work, and I sobbed the story to him. In an attempt to illustrate this story, i had him follow me outside where I pointed out the birdshit on the siding and the empty nest.
We saw eachother at the same time. Apparently, moments before I stepped outside the door, Mother Robin had returned home for a feeding. Finding her brood minus three, she turned to see me pointing to her home carrying on something awful.
This is when she attempted to assassinate me. Adding insult (and more injury) to injury, I went inside and miserably had my second of three anxiety attacks. Not only did I disrupt and distroy this peaceful family of robins, I removed all trust I had gained from mommy robin. My wonderful nature observation experience had taken an awful urban turn. Fucking typical.
Anyways, I had managed to calm myself down over the past few days by absorbing myself in my own motherly instincts. Olivia had her tonsils out yesterday, and I had to focus myself on creating a peaceful and popsicle filled atmosphere for her to rest up in.
We got back from the hospital at about 1:30 yesterday afternoon. Liv was sleeping, sedated in the front seat as I pulled in. While I was gathering up all my hospital souvenirs, I happened to hear it. "Squawk!" It was the hungry cry of a baby robin, which I was so used to hearing out front. I listened for it again. "Squawk!" I honed in on the direction from which it was coming, and then I saw it.
Underneath Brandon's truck, sat a baby robin, squawking for its mother. Sitting, not standing. I got out of my car carefully to avoid scaring it, partially to scan the yard for signs of hope: mommy nearby, siblings, or to just see it fly away. But mostly because I couldn't sit in my car all day in the 90 degree heat, and neither could Olivia.
To my horror, yes, it did half fly away. But it appeared to be carrying something in its claws. Knowing in my mind what it actually was, but convinced I would find peace somehow in this whole thing, I followed it carefully to get a better look. Hoping to see the stick under it, I was completely disappointed. No, disappointed is not the word. Horrified is better but I've used that word already in the paragraph. Nevertheless, that's what it was. The chick had a broken left leg, which was bent at a 90 degree angle off to the side of its body.
This may have happened when it hit the neighbor's siding, or perhaps while being attacked by some predator. Either way, it was all my fault. He hobbled along with his grotesque injury, seemingly happy to even be alive, but what was I expecting? For him to be screaming, rolling on the ground in pain? Trying to hang himself with a peice of nest string??
I retreated inside, with Liv, to have my third anxiety attack. In an attempt to be at one with nature, I tortured an entire family of beautiful robins! I went out today to check again, hoping to at least find mommy bird nurturing her only remaining baby, but to my dismay, there are no signs of life coming from the basket. The petunias area even dead.
I can only hope that the birdie, in all the commotion, while I was thankfully not paying attention to him, grew up just a little bit more, just enough to take flight and grow up alive. But I'm more likely assuming that in her depression, Mommy disappeared to drink herself to death, Daddy gave up and has moved on to a younger, less depressed robin, and the remaining baby birdie died of thirst, hunger heat exaustion and lonliness in the nest.
I've been censoring the story to my kids, since the "escape". It's worse than any Adult rated video game, so I am now sheltering it from them. I've sent them back inside for the time being. Anyways, I watered the flower basket today, hoping to salvage whatever life can possibly be salvaged. It's not looking hopeful at all.
