You Have Got To Be Kidding!!! (Part lll)

Yes, that would be Mother Nature, a bird’s Curse and a bird’s Blessing….She brought us back to our nests each year, and or helped us find the twigs and straw to make a new one.  Then, out of the blue, she would snatch them away from us, even the very tree the nest resided in…And no one can agree on what happened that day. It was a severe thunderstorm, no, it was a twister, looked like a cyclone…I mean if the good Two Footed did not have it straight, pity the poor Bird Brains.

Let me tell you what I remember of that fateful day…well, from the perspective of a limited bird brain.  The day was hot and muggy.  I had to keep flapping my wings to cool down my three little Little Peepers, keeping a wary eye on the sky, looking for answers to what to expect next.  I had my hands full, I tell you. 

 

Although I had laid four tiny, perfect turquoise eggs, only three of them hatched.  Two of my Little Peepers were perfect, (like me) always staying close by their Mama but the third one was a regular Daniel(a) Boone.  She chirped first, gobbled the worms first, flew out of the nest first…a frontier explorer.  I couldn’t decide if it was because she was too smart or too dim-witted to understand the wisdom in caution.

As the day grew more ominous, my Perfect Peepers clung to me like velcro, my Daniel(a) Boone Peeper strained to see what was happening. She flew out on a limb and scanned the horizon, refusing to return to the safety of the nest and her Mama’s wing.

I can’t say for sure, did the rain come first, or if it was the deafening thunder, the blinding lighting, followed by the high gusts of winds that lifted roofs off houses, picked up cars in its path and splintered centuries old trees, ripping them and their contents up, sending them sailing in all directions… like they were toothpicks, I tell you. So Wizard of Oz.  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, see for yourself.

One minute I had a home, and a family….the next I had joined the legions of the destitute, seeking shelter under a felled but still leafy tree branch.  But where were my Little Peepers?  I stretched my neck out, listened, scanned as far as my eyes could see, willing the wind, the rain, the thunder and cracks of lightning to cease and desist.

As morning broke, so did the freak of nature storm – surely no Mother (Nature) would sanction this.  I stepped out cautiously, from under the leafy branch, trying to interpret the chirping, deciphering the humming-bird, from the blue jay, to the black bird, to the dreaded crow…It was them, I was sure.  With great joy, I flew towards their little chirps.  There were my two little Perfect Peepers but where, oh, where was my Daniel(a) Boone Peeper?

I would like to tell you a happily ever after story but the truth is, I never saw my Daniel(a) Boone Peeper again.  I choose to think, she had a safe landing and at this very moment is telling her own Little Peepers about the storm of the century. 

But you have to help me…If you see her out there tell her (like E.T.), Daniel(a) Boone Peeper, CALL HOME!