Nature Entertaining Me

It doesn’t take much to entertain me, or tickle my funny bone.  I have a bird feeder hanging from the eve of my deck, and watching the multitude of different birds that visit is entertaining indeed.  The most aggressive of them are the nuthatches that walk up and down the posts, forward and backward, before perching quickly on the edge of the feeder to sling seeds in every which direction with abandon.  The flickers are the greedy ones as are the redheaded woodpeckers that get the feeder swinging from the weight of their larger bodies, chasing away the smaller birds in the process.  The funniest antics come from the squirrels, though.  There are three of them who visit the feeder, snatching the sunflower seeds and filling their mouths to overflowing before jumping down from the railing and sprinting across the deck absconding with their booty.   There might be as many as two dozen birds scampering around on the railing and the floor of the deck after the seeds scattered by the more voracious  birds with less etiquette that sling the seeds hither and thither and yon, with the seeds raining down on the deck and rail in abundance.

The discarded seeds have a tendency to sprout under the sprinklers, and some of the sprouts aren’t easily cut.  The weed eater works well in eradicating the more stubborn sprouts.  Needless to say, it’s a good thing the feeder isn’t located over one of my flower beds.  The birds manage to spread enough seeds amongst my flowers without locating the feeder in such close proximity that the birds would plant the various kinds of grasses that would sprout there in abundance, squeezing out my flowers in the process.  I hate weeding, but I’ve learned there is no other way of getting rid of the grasses that will take over my flowerbeds if left to grow until I’m ready to yank them up from their chosen spot.  I have to force myself to get out into the yard before my flowerbeds take on the resemblance of a jungle.  Sometimes I’m my own worst enemy.

I was once told that geese were the answer to controlling unwanted grass because they love eating new grass as it sprouts, but they also love eating the flowers, I learned that the hard way.  Besides, geese can be very aggressive, they have a penchant for nipping at your heels as you turn your back to walk away.  Even though they’ve gotten a reputation as being good at guard duty, for making a racket and chasing away door-to-door salesmen, the feathered sentinels leave a nasty mess wherever they happen to waddle, which was usually on my deck.  There’s nothing more disgusting than having to wash off the deck before you can come in to avoid tracking their sticky mess into the house.  We have an abundance of wild geese in our area that fly over the house by the hundreds in the spring and fall in their distinct V-formation to the large 36 acre pond at the end of our street.  Often the entire flock decides to defecate at the same time and the windshields of the cars, or anything else directly beneath them, becomes whitewashed in runny slurries you’d best hose off as quickly as possible.  The slurry has been known to etch a car’s paint with mottled dull splotches that often can’t be easily polished out, no matter how much elbow grease is employed; so much for geese being the answer to eradicating stubborn sprouts of grass.

Like I said, it doesn’t take much to tickle my funny bone.  Nature has a way of supplying me with a performance that often keeps me entertained.