“I’m tired and I’m bored
And I have kinks in my leg
From sitting, just sitting here day after day
It’s work! How I hate it!
I’d much rather play!
I’d take a vacation, fly off for a rest
If I could find someone to stay on my nest!
If I could find someone, I’d fly away – free…”
And so begins the 1940s book by Dr. Seuss, about Horton the elephant who took on the job of sitting on that lazy birds nest and hatching her egg.
My tail isn’t so successful at its conclusion but tells of a bird-lazy as Mayzie. It begins on a Sunday when we noticed a broken bird’s egg on our front porch.
“Oh no,” we thought. The little bird who worked so hard to build its nest on our front door wreath has lost one of her eggs to the stiff spring winds of our almost ocean-front home.
I brought a step stool out so that I could check on the contents of what might be left of the mother bird’s efforts to raise her family. What I saw and immediately photographed, astonished me. There were three slightly speckled small white eggs and one very large, heavily mottled egg.
“How can this be.” I wondered, and did what people used to do before there was a Google. I texted the picture to my aunt and her husband, who are biologists and keen observers of nature.
What I learned from them and some googling of my own was, some birds are just evil: A cowbird sneaks around watching for a female bird who is building a nest and then she waits for her to leave for a time. Then that lazy ole Mazie of a cowbird lays her egg in a borrowed nest, but that isn’t the worst thing she does, she kicks out one of the original eggs to make room for her own. I am incensed, and now I understand the broken egg on our porch.
Now don’t be wagging a finger at me because I know that nature can be cruel – But lazy? That is quite too much. To add insult to injury, my aunt informed me that it’s against the law to destroy a cowbird’s egg.
There is more you need to know about Mayzie, the cowbird. Her offspring will hatch before the natural eggs, grow larger and very quickly take most of the food provided by the real mother bird. Generally her own three remaining little darlings don’t thrive, and frequently die.
I want justice, and there is no good solution! Destroy the cowbird egg and break the law or break the heart of the hard-working mother bird who has been deceived into raising a monster in her own home. What would you do?
That is exactly what I did. I very carefully removed the monster egg so that I didn’t destroy it and put it in a very safe, cool spot. Who knows what will happen? Not I.
What happened next proves that no good deed goes unpunished. We kept the step stool; near so we could watch the little birds hatch and grow according to all laws of creation and a little help form me.
The season moves on with sunshine, rain and good things for “our” mother bird to feed her babies. One morning we woke up to find a gentle, purring, tabby cat sitting contentedly on our cushioned rocking chair, basking in the morning light. Scattered around her were only a small feather or two, and she was napping.
I leave it to you reader to make sense of this tale; I have nothing more to tell you.
Horton the elephant ended up with a bird that looked like him. We ended up with cat hairs on our cushion.
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From the Bible: God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. Genesis 1:31
