Saturday, September 15, 2007

It's like I live in a show on Animal Planet. Also, proof that I'm not a good photographer.

Thursday night, I went outside for my daily dose of watching the birds do their thing in the backyard. They refuse to eat the stale bread crumbs that I throw out for them. Those slowly deteriorate until they've melted into the ground. The suet cake that I hung for them in April showed no sign of being reduced in size until it halfway melted in our August heatwave. I don't know what they're eating, but they LOVE anything that I haven't touched. I've thought about a bird house, but - besides the fact that it would be tainted by me, and therefore unusable to them - one of my neighbors has three outdoor cats, one of which prowls around our house like we're his vacation destination of choice, and somehow I think luring the birds to his vacation spot would just be cruel. He's a beautiful Siamese, and he likes to walk around the outside of our house, causing my two indoor cats to run frantically from window to window, determined to howl the house down if necessary in order to protect it from this threat. The Siamese will occasionally jump our privacy fence and walk around our backyard, probably just to show our cats that he's the boss of the neighborhood and his person loves him enough to let him roam free and be king of the jungle, while their person is obviously a heartless idiot who only keeps them around for her own amusement. The funny moment came when the Siamese jumped over our fence, and found a full grown German Shepherd unexpectedly napping about 20 feet away. And then ran, in full berserk mode, screeching the entire time, straight back up the fence and over the top. I laughed so hard that I may or may not have peed in my pants a little. Anyway, Thursday night I went outside and got my own surprise... He was sitting on the window sill when I went out, but I had to run back and get the camera. The flash scared him more than a little, and he jumped around the corner to hide in our drain spout: Because - as the Siamese established above - I am mean and heartless, I kept taking his picture with a flash in a vain attempt to get a better picture of him. For some unknown reason, this caused him to try to hide even more, and I was only able to get a shot of his butt as he disappeared: I named him Prince. I already have my own personal prince, so I didn't do anything like kiss him. But it'd be nice if he stuck around in case I ever needed a spare. I thought calling him Prince might make him feel important. Some people might call that bribery. I call it prudence. So,the next time you think I don't lead an exciting life, just remember - I practically live in the jungle here in my little garden spot of Alabama. Any day now I could go outside and meet a lion. I just hope he waits for me to blog about him before he eats me for lunch.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Did you have a wine filter on your camera? That helps.