Birds

This morning as I was sitting and watching outside my window I noticed that an awful lot of garbage had blown down to our corner of the parking lot. We actually have a real nice spot and I didn't like all the litter, so while the dogs were tied out, I put on a pair of rubber gloves (yes, I keep packs of them in the truck) and grabbed some garbage bags and decided to clean up the area around us.
Well, the very first thing that I picked up was a HUGE garbage bag. It must have blown out of the garbage can further up the lot.
So I began to fill it up. A man cleaning up the yard across the street asked me if I wanted him to come over and clean up "my" garbage. I told him "No, I will do it. I don't mind."
I only cleaned up the garbage that had blown into what I determined was "our area," at least ours until the weekend is over. But I almost filled up the garbage bag. I then carried the bag over to the garbage cans that are behind our truck. They were full and running over. Anything loose was blowing. I wondered if it is always this breezy here.
So now that that was done I gathered the dogs and got back into the truck. It was already too hot to sit outside.
Pops was still laying down so I grabbed my book and thought I would read for a bit. That is until I looked out the window and saw a few birds under "our" tree. There were four of them. One of them was picking stuff off the ground and eating it. The other three were chasing that one around with their beaks open and pecking at the one with the food. I couldn't understand why they were being so mean and not getting their own food. Then I noticed that those three looked young. They were full size but appeared to have different feathers and just looked young.
So I figured that they must be "teen age" birds and the one gathering food must be the mom. They kept on pecking at her and chasing her trying to always take her food. And when she flew up to the wires, they flew up right behind her and continued their assault on poor mom.
I threw some cereal out of the window. I assumed that if there were plenty of food they would leave her alone. But I was wrong. She came and got a beakful of cereal and then turned around and put cereal into the mouths of her full grown children.
I could not believe I was seeing this. Just like humans, these teens were incapable or unwilling to help themselves. Why did this mama bird let them get away with this behavior? Why do mama humans let their kids get away with certain behaviors?
Mama bird got no rest. All day whenever I watched them she got the same treatment. At one point, a bigger, darker bird came into the yard. I had thrown some popcorn out by then and a rice cake. They were feasting. But when the bigger, darker bird (daddy?) came over, the teens tried to peck at him and get him to feed them. Well, he turned toward them, pecked them back, HARD! And ran them away from the food. haha
They stood off to the side watching him eat; full size birds standing there with their beaks wide open just waiting for food.
It was interesting watching them all interact. But I must say, I found the treatment of the mama disgusting. I was hoping and rooting for her all day to practice a little tough love herself. It was time these kids helped themselves, or better yet, brought some food to poor, tired mama.
Pops and I had church by ourselves again today. Well, we listened to the Zugg Family singers as they sang at Hanging Rock Christian Camp. Kevin Zeigler is uploading it to a live stream via the internet. Then we listened to a sermon by Bruce Goosman, that we had gotten from his son, our friend, Keenan.
It was a very good sermon. He told us a story that Danny Kaye told from a LP album called, Stories from far away places. It was a story about animals in the jungle. They had a tree that would drop food for them after they repeated the word, Uwangelema.
The story goes on to tell what happened when the animals forgot the word that would make the food fall from the tree.
I won't give the story away, just in case you want to google it yourself.
But Bruce tied the story really nicely with how we sometimes forget the Word of God. It was a very interesting sermon. Good job, Bruce.
We have such good Christian friends and technology is so amazing that I almost feel like we can still fellowship even when we can't.
I did go out and sit in the sun for a little while today. But it is just too hot to stay out for very long. I am reading a very good book that a good friend, Jane Duncan, loaned to me. I am enjoying The Centurion's Wife very much.
You can also get very good entertainment just watching out the window. At one point Pops and I watched 3 people on horses gallop right through the city.
We worked around a little on the truck today too. Just tinkering around fixing odd and end things that we have left go until we had more time. Well, today was the time.
I am not bored, but I rarely get bored. I think Pops was a little bored today although I didn't see him play any cards like he usually does when he's bored.
So I figure we will be here one more day since tomorrow is Memorial Day. I am anxious to cook out on the grill. I hope it's not so windy tomorrow. And I hope Mama bird doesn't try to take our food to feed her brats. haha