Happy Independence Day

We are empty-nesters again. The time just flew by, this time around. It seemed like just yesterday they were little blobs of pink downy goo, when in actuality, it took, like, two weeks.

One day in May, I stepped out the front door to find a pile of dry grass, twigs, and moss bits on the porch underneath the porch light. On higher inspection, I found this doozy of a nest, built exactly to the specs of the top surface of the light fixture, decorated jauntily with overhanging moss and twigs. A tour de force of nest design.

Not looking forward to cleaning the guano off the light for the duration, the Captain lobbied for its removal. How do you think that went? No harm in trying, I guess, but he really had no chance.

The nest stayed, and two little sky-blue eggs followed. Each time we left the house via the front door, there would be a flurry of wings as Mom would take off for the safety of the nearby Japanese maple, and we would listen and look for action.

Fast forward maybe a week or two, and these little blobs popped out while we were entertaining a four-year-old (practically five) and her parents.

Soon, the cement under the nest was littered with cherry pits from nearby trees and the occasional blue stain evidencing certain blueberry theft, and the inevitable whitish stains. Hey, it's nature.

Fast forward a week and a half (I swear! That's all!) and we came home from vacation to these little beaks. How adorable? Hard to quantify. Not quite baby meerkat adorable, but definitely bumping into baby hedgehog territory.

Fast forward another week or two (hey, I have a new DVR and I know how to use it), and they are gone. All growed up. As Mork once said: Fly! Be free! Or, as Helen Hunt once shrieked to little data-collecting bots in that hilarious Tornado movie (it was supposed to be funny, right?): Fly! Fly! Fly! Fliiiiiiiiiiiy!

All that's left is the job of cleaning up after them. I know, so Deja Vu.