Second Helpings

For the Birds

As I’ve mentioned before, one of my small pleasures in life is feeding and watching the birds that visit my garden. Before Christmas we had a new carpet laid in our kitchen, which has a door leading out to the garden. Two gifts I received for Christmas were a new bird feeding station and some expensive toning slippers. Bear with me, these three things are linked in another tale of calamity.

I have a bad habit of going out into the garden in my slippers. This means they don’t last very long when mud and waterlogged lawns start to rot the delicate fabrics. My new toning slippers are sturdier and costing more than I’d usually pay for slippers I felt determined to remember to change into old shoes when going into the garden in future. This would also ensure my new kitchen carpet was spared from mud, damp leaves and other miscellaneous objects that tend to stick to the soles of slippers. Things were going well at the start of the year.

After placing my new bird station in the garden at the end of December, I decided my original bird table also needs replacing, but settled on just tidying and cleaning it for the time being. Armed with plastic bags, dustpan and brush, cleaning sprays and fresh food I set about picking all the abandoned food off the lawn, scrubbing and cleaning the table top, then filling containers and the table with fresh food. Looking out the window I was pleased with the result. It would do for the time being.

The next few days turned very windy and on looking out the window again one morning I discovered my recently cleaned and restored bird table had toppled over. The newly placed food was now scattered all over the lawn and I considered not for the first time lately what a waste of time many of the things I do turn out to be. I asked hubby if he’d kindly go outside and pick the table up, but after waiting five minutes decided if you want a job doing, do it yourself.

In my haste to rectify the situation I forgot to change into my garden shoes, so the new toning slippers were introduced to wet grass, mud and bird droppings. As I realised my error I felt quite annoyed with myself, but knowing the slippers were machine washable realised it wasn’t a major tragedy. It was when I bent to rescue the bird table I forgot all about my slippers and my annoyance changed to anger at someone else not a million miles away from where I was standing.

You may have read of the presence of a rat residing in our garden late last year as I wrote a blog entry on the topic and how obsessed hubby had become with getting rid of it. He’d been paranoid the rat would climb up to the bird table and leave its germs and diseases up there, so unbeknown to me he’d decided to paint the stem of the table with something very black, very thick and very sticky, which now covered both of my hands completely.

Now fuming, I returned to the house in my muddy slippers, not only leaving muck on the new carpet, but black finger marks on anything I touched. It appears hubby in his wisdom had painted the bird table with black anti-burglar paint, believing that would deter the long gone rat from climbing onto the table. What was he thinking? The rat would pause in its tracks and think ‘Whoa...just a minute. If I climb up there I’ll leave paw prints and the police may have my records down at the station and I’ll be done for theft of bird food? ‘

It’s strange how when I tell anyone the sad story of my sorry mishaps they roll around laughing instead of showing any sympathy for my trauma. Anyway, I’m now the proud owner of a brand new, gorgeous bird table, pictured below. Should anyone even think about painting it with anything but wood preserver, they may find themselves left out in the garden as fodder for future rats or birds of prey.