A mother bird has built a nest in the flower box on our back deck… right in the middle of the new flowers my wife, Debbie recently planted – making it impossible to water said plants. I would find this wildly funny were it not for one ominous fact: these flowers will die from the hot and dry weather we are currently having (still funny to me at this point), the eggs will hatch, the mother bird will move on – abandoning the nest (chuckle, chuckle); and Debbie will BUY MORE! (gulp)
This morning I was getting ready to mow my back yard when I heard quite a lot of squawking and chirping. I looked at the back patio and saw two or three mockingbirds positioned on the guttering above and branches around, making all of the ruckus. The mystery was solved when I cranked the mower up and startled an unseen black cat which had been crouching behind the grill, dreaming of a bird-egg omelet. Just yesterday we had noticed a broken egg on the ground beneath the nest and I assume this might have been the cat burglar that was responsible.
After I finished mowing, I sat down on the patio to enjoy a little reading in the sun. The noise assault soon began on me. You see, mother bird (not to be confused with a mother board) and I have an uneasy truce worked out: as long as I don’t make eye contact or move very fast, she tolerates me. However, the mockingbird hitmen did not get the email and were quite threatening in their tone toward me.
I was sitting there reading from the book of Acts, thinking about the early church’s practice of breaking bread from house to house, taking care of widows, selling their goods to meet the needs of others, and “having all things in common.” As I pondered what this might look like in the twenty-first century, I realized that these birds were doing what we should do as church members. The mother had suffered a loss yesterday and her friends were there with her. Not only were they trying to protect her and her remaining egg, I also noticed that each of these noisy birds had a dead bug in its beak to bring to mom so she didn’t have to leave her nest to eat. I’m not suggesting that we bring dead bugs to all of our pals at church (might be cool, though), but what if we were there to support those who had suffered loss, protected those who were vulnerable, and provided for those who couldn’t provide for themselves? Just food for thought (oh, yes I did)… Think I’ll go tweet about it.