Houseguests

We have houseguests. 

 They come annually.  They are not actually invited, nor do they keep their space tidy, nor are they aware when they have overstayed their welcome.  They are not family, nor are they human.

Our guests are our feathered foes  friends.  

Now, I have to be honest here and say, I do not really like birds.  I know some of you may be absolutely enchanted by the creatures.  I am not, and I have never been.  They are not cute, they are not cuddly, they have been known to awaken me in the morning with their incessant chatter, and I have been the target, on occasion, of their poor (or perhaps, if they know my feelings for their species, incredible) excretory aim.  

I do not hate them, nor do I want to harm them, but I also don't really want to share my living space with them (or add them to the list of creatures that I clean up after). 

With all this said, they come to my house in the spring........

 

and they stay until fall.

They take up residence under the roof of our front porch.  They build nests that look like clumps of mud, with just enough grass/straw to fall out and adorn my porch...sticking up like little weeds amongst the rolling plain of, you guessed it, poop!   From early April to October, our front porch becomes a big pile of, well, you can use your imagination.  Or, I can help you out.....

Part of my daily routine consists of: spot pouring a half bottle of bleach on the worst parts of the porch (stick around long enough and you will learn that I have an unnatural affinity for bleach,) pouring the used mop water from the inside of the house over whole porch, scrubbing at the poop with a broom, continuously ducking and darting around due to the fact that I am in the direct line of fire, spraying the porch with a hose, squeegying off the water/poop/bleach mixture, returning an hour later to see that all of my work was in vain.

We have actually been known to knock down these nests.  We do so when birdy is not home, and so we do not hurt the birds.  I really don't want to hurt them.  I just want them to go away and build another nest elsewhere.  They are capable of that.  There are 753,485,287,679,432 places on this island alone that they can make a nest.  Why does it have to be our porch?  Anyway, just the other day, when there was a particularly large amount of poo-poo on my porch, and I was just about to ask Christos to knock it down again, guess what I saw?

Who can knock that down?  If you can, don't tell me, I do not want to know.


And, the next day, I saw this:

We have 2 families and at least 8 babies on our porch.  Hungry babies.  Poopy babies.  Thankfully, this second nest (aren't the actual nests just lovely creations of art?) is over a hanging lamp on our porch that bears the brunt of their

But the other one has no such catch-all between nest and floor.

So, yesterday afternoon, Christos built this....

How cute is he?

 Now we are living in harmony with all of God's creatures again.

I was a bit afraid that word would get around.  Like, "hey, all birds in a 20 mile radius...these people are bird friendly and awesome, they actually made an extension to our nest...come, bring your family, lets create a commune."   We shall see......

Incidentally, he took the camera and climbed up on our ladder contraption (a chair on top of our coffee table...all dragged outside) to take an up close picture of the little poopers.  When he did, he saw pictures of our fuse-box, soapy dishes, and our washing machine (all for a post to come) all saved on the camera.  If he was not already concerned about the state of my sanity certainly he is now.