Friday, May 25, 2007

Love Hate



My front stoop is apparently quite inviting to birds. These interlopers are about at eye-level in an only-half-functioning string of "light balls" -- prime placement for the photographing. They have no compunction about where their excretions land. So rude. And completely impassive in the face of my landlordial ranting.
When I first moved in, some mourning dove had claimed the ledge above my front door as her annual nesting spot, and it took a series of inhospitable gestures on my part to drive her away. I used to be so fond of mourning dove cries until I was being woken up by them.
I come by my bird conflict naturally. Mom (who loved many birds and bird watching) had an ongoing battle trying to keep sparrows (or was it swallows?) out of the garage. At one point, she bought these two plastic owls that had those plastic topaz eyes and hung them in the garage to serve as scarecrows. Or scaresparrows, in this case. I don't know if they helped, but she'd hung them up by tying a string around their necks and then tying the other end to a rafter. It sort of looked like she'd hung the owls in effigy.

2 comments:

Boomer said...

I hope you get to watch them leqrn to fly. That would be cool. Worh cleaning up poop? I don't know.

Anonymous said...

More likely swallows than sparrows. They nest in places like barns, garages and under bridges. Yeah, I know--get a load of Mark Trail.