(pardon the blurriness)
As a result, we’re going through bird seed at an amazing rate, with the feeders needing to be filled up almost every day. Since the wild bird seed (the cheapest stuff I can find – what, like I’m going to buy the expensive stuff? They’re birds!) at the grocery store is about twice as expensive as that at Wal-Mart, I bought a few big bags at Wal-Mart (yes, I swore I’d never return. Believe me, I wasn’t happy about it), but the birds burned through those in no time flat. Finally, last week when Fred and I were feeding the cats at the pet store, I noticed that they had huge bags on sale for a pretty good price. When we were almost out of the Wal-Mart bird seed, I went to the pet store and bought a 40 pound bag of wild bird seed for $7.50.
Not only was this a pretty damn good price (as far as I can tell – don’t burst my bubble), but it’s also started attracting a cardinal, who stops by regularly to fill up. He’s a nervous sort, though, and apparently knows that we have cats, so he sits in the tree and checks out the surroundings carefully before venturing forth to eat.
And then he swoops in to eat a little before something spooks him and he flies off.
The birds in our back yard spend a LOT of time being spooked. One minute the ground will be covered with blackbirds and doves, and the feeders will be coated in (we think) finches, and suddenly they’ll all fly off in a cloud with a loud squawk, sit in the trees for a few minutes, and then gradually make their way back to the feeders.
They see the cats watching them, but they don’t seem to be scared of the cats – perhaps they don’t realize that’s a cat door right by the feeders. Of course, they’re perfectly safe, because although the cats will chatter and whip their tails around and flatten themselves along the floor and watch the birds with big, dark eyes, it doesn’t seem to occur to them that they can actually go through the cat door and chase the birds.
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The spud got off the phone after talking to her father last week and said “Daddy said that [his girlfriend] is going to have her tubes cleaned out!”
“Oh really?” I said.
“Yeah. He says they want to have a kid. Daddy wants twins! Fraternal twins!” she said, a little excited at the idea of having a little brother or sister or maybe both.
“Well, good luck to Daddy on that,” I said. Heh.
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It occurs to me that I have a whole folder of FAQ questions I still haven’t gotten to. If nothing more exciting happens around here, I’ll concentrate on getting those answered over the next few days. If you have any burning questions to be added to the list, ask!]]>