Overheard at the dinner table

One morning last month a couple of industrious birds built a nest right by our back door.  The eggs must have hatched while we were on vacation, because we could tell when we got back and worked out in the yard that they were very worried every time we were out there.  They would perch in various places around the yard chirping, but would never go back up to their nest.

Rachel (who of all my children still at home is most interested in my cameras) stalked them from inside the house to get some pictures of the little birds and the parent birds.

I hadn’t realized what great pictures she got—she was persistent! Every time she would watch the “birdlets” (that’s what we called them) she would give us an update on how they seemed to be doing, what they sounded like, and how the parents seemed to be doing.

Tonight she came to the dinner table looking down.  She explained that she hadn’t seen the birds at all today, and so they must have learned to fly and left the nest.

I agreed that if they had learned to fly, the parent birds might have decided that there were better places to hang out than right by our busy back door.

And then Josh said, “We’d probably better go ahead and have a bird funeral, just in case.  And we can name them Pecky 2, Pecky 3, and Pecky 4—you know, the best friends we never knew!” 

The kids laughed and laughed and we talked about them burying that poor dead bird years ago.  How is that 4 years can be so long ago??