The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

A couple days ago I was wandering the garden, something I do a lot more now with the pandemic lockdown, and caught sight of a weirdly shaped bird nest in last year’s bean trellis. Elongated with an offest hole at the top, what I took to be an oriole nest. Having never seen an actual oriole nest, I was pleased to find one and planned to keep it with a few other nests collected over the years. One, a hummingbird nest with two very tiny eggs, I took after realizing the parents weren’t coming back. This oriole nest I carefully cut away the twigs holding it to the bean fencing and mounted it in my shack near the hornet’s nest and a few other museum pieces.

The next day we were inside the studio and Karen kept asking, what is that noise? I didn’t hear anything but she kept asking anyway and finally I went back into the room she was standing in and holy orioley, the noise was chirping coming from that nest! I’d stolen the nest AND the babies! I not only robbed the cradle, I took the cradle too. Orioles are fairly rare in these parts so I felt terrible, guilt-ridden over probably bringing them to near extinction, something akin to killing the last pterodactyl. I felt bad. I felt like an idiot. The nest looked old and I’d just assumed it was last year’s nest. What a moron. What a fiend! Nature is cruel, it sure doesn’t need help from me.

Without much hope of success I took the nest back to where I’d stolen it, reattached it to the bean trellis and hoped, without much reason to have any hope, the parents would return to their offspring. I’d always heard if a bird nest was disturbed the adults wouldn’t come back to it, probably something I heard on Fox News or Breitbart, but what else could I do? Put a notice in the newspaper: Lost Oriole Chicks, Need Good Home? Probably get some coronavirus survivalist who would take them for food, one more layer in the new freezer filled with locker meat.

Well, I went out the day after I’d rehung the purloined nest, not expecting much, but … sure enough, out hopped the mom and I noticed the pop jumping limb to limb in the fir tree behind her, both watching the creep who’d stolen their prodigy, maybe see if he was monstrous enough to try it again. He wasn’t. I don’t suppose they appreciated a parents’ day off while I babysat the kids. No, I don’t suppose they did.

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