It Had Seemed Like Such A Good Idea...

The bird realized on the third day, that is, one day too late, that she had chosen badly, disastrously, really.   This building, with its inviting beams, joined at just the right angle for a sparrow-sized nest, was not abandoned.  The people and their dog, that's right a DOG, had apparently just been away for a couple of days.

Why had the big, overhead door been left open? Whose fault was that?  Not hers.  But she had been beguiled by  that beckoning, yawning space.  Now, with three eggs settled into her carefully woven nest, a sweet little nest that some philistine collector might purloin at any moment, they were all stuck.  She couldn't move the eggs.  She couldn't sit on them - not for very long at least.  The people and their cars were in and out and in and out, and the DOG - a yapppy little one, at all hours of the day and half the night.  The garage door flew up and down frequently and terrifyingly.  Car doors slammed.  Voices and car radios, boomed - it was a nightmare.

And today, a fresh horror.  The big human mother had been in to sweep the garage floor, raising clouds of dust and dead leaves and whacking away at spiderwebs overhead and in the windows with a broom.  She wielded the thing like a battle ax.  She hadn't seemed to notice the nest or if she had, she hadn't let on. But the sparrow's heart, which normally throbbed at 460 beats a minute, had double timed it and nearly exploded out of her chest.  The cheap corn broom had come close, so close.

The bird was pretty sure the eggs were safe for now.  The people had not spotted the nest.  There would have been a fuss.  They had seen her, though.  The woman and the boy, twice now had come upon her, and she'd flown out in a terror.  The woman was tall.  The bird was going to have to be careful or she'd get a talon stuck in her great head of human hair. The woman had remarked to the boy something about how creepy it was to have a wild bird get really close to you.  "They're fine in the trees and stuff but it's weird when they get close."

Ha! the bird had thought as she had winged it to a tree at the edge of the drive where she watched and waited anxiously. Right back at you, fatty.

It was still warm. The eggs might be OK with her hopping off and on, for awhile at least. But if these monsters persisted in occupying the garage she couldn't go on like this until her eggs hatched.  Oh the bird life, oh the wretchedness.