The Poosey Digest: Angels drifted down

Greetings from Poosey.

I didn’t grow up feeding the birds. We lived on a farm where there was always plenty of corn left in the fields so I figured the little beaked buggers could fend for themselves. When Herb and I moved to town and the cornfield was some miles distant, I turned into a birder – at least a feeder. I’d like to say that it was my warm, compassionate heart that changed. Actually, it gave me something interesting to watch while I stood at the sink and washed dishes.

And I’m speaking from complete bird ignorance here, but in my naive estimation, birds do not always get along. They have their own pecking order.

Doves are hard to scare away. If a passing cloud casts a shadow upon my feeding spot the sparrows will take flight in a moment. Those who don’t see the shadow will be scared by the flapping of those who do, but nothing scares a dove. Either their European war heritage has given them nerves of steel or they don’t see well.

A wren is cautious but not nearly as cowardly as the sparrow.

Redbirds don’t like each other very much. Every morning there’s at least one boss redbird and she’ll not tolerate any other redbird feeding in the area. And I’ve got to add since I’m such an expert birder now, the females of the species are the most feisty. Any human parallels you might be drawing are your own fault, but I have a personal theory that female redbirds come from Alaska and can see Russia from their roosts.

But all the rules are thrown aside when one character shows up – the Blue Jay. This irritating character won’t abide any other bird in its presence and will spend as much time fighting the others as he does eating. He’s a roughneck who walks into the bar with no special thirst, just a need to pound someone’s head. A Blue Jay will take a swipe at a squirrel. (And I’m not including squirrels in this column.

Any bird feeder will tell you that we don’t even talk about squirrels – the bane of all birders, the fuzzy-tailed scavengers aren’t even human!)

So my little bird society meets several times a day just outside my kitchen window, feeding, pecking, arguing, and fighting. Until one day…

You remember the morning a couple of weeks ago when the entire mid-section of the nation awoke to the Mother of All Snowstorms. Deep snow. Deeper snow. Then icy snow. It was a blizzard about which we shall all weary our grandchildren for the coming eons. I wasn’t even able to get my back door open to toss bird feed onto the snow and for two days the birds would fly to their makeshift Cafe Crump and find nothing. Then the miracle happened.

On day three I was able to blast open my back door and toss out the grub. The birds flocked in by the hundreds, and the most amazing thing happened. After two days without food, they had no desire to argue. No fighting. Even the Jay was well behaved. The birds ate right alongside the squirrels! The boss redbird could care less about who was pecking in her territory.

I couldn’t help but think what was going on outside my front door in the streets of Poosey – neighbors who had seldom taken the time to chat when things were sunny now scooping each other’s drives, pulling strangers out of snowdrifts, hauling in groceries to folks whom they barely knew. When times got tough our finest angels drifted down through the falling snow.

My Schwan’s Food man stopped by yesterday and told me that he’d taken the wrong turn down a snowy lane and there was no escape — no backing out, no going forward — frozen food in the surest sense of the term.

Then a fellow came along on a farm tractor and pulled him out. The guy wasn’t a customer. He wouldn’t take anything. He just said, "You needed help and I had a tractor." Our finer angels sometimes drive Case tractors.

Once the roads began to clear and the sun broke through, my bird customers resumed their bickering. And the rest of us – well, we always have a choice of learning what a bit of suffering can bring – or just be birdbrains.

You ever in Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.