Steve’s shorts; The Cardinals…
[Although we live in NJ (only thirteen miles from the Lincoln Tunnel), wildlife is plentiful around here, especially now during the pandemic. We’ve even had deer on the lawn. Earlier this spring, we had a woodchuck mother make her annual return to her hideaway under our shed, and squirrels and chipmunks seem plentiful this year as well. The little tale that follows is just another reminder that Nature’s creatures can do just fine without us. Consider this story a fable. Hopefully it brightens your life a bit.]
The Cardinals
Copyright 2020, Steven M. Moore
Mrs. Cardinal had picked Mr. Cardinal because he was a good-looking guy strutting on the branches and whistling his songs. He was a rather modest fellow as male cardinals ago, in spite of his spiffy red plumage. As a new wife, though, she chose a less than ideal place to build her nest—a forsythia hedge that formed the boundary between the Moores’ house and the neighbors’. It was high enough to keep her young safe from the neighborhood terrorists, the cat sisters; the cardinals rather enjoyed taunting them as they eyed them from below. But Mrs, Cardinal, being a new mom, hadn’t counted on the hedge trimmers, mowers, and leaf blowers.
The human gardeners threatened the nest with their trimming shears. At least they didn’t make that much noise, only a subtle snip-snip, but they seemed more dangerous than the cat sisters. Mrs. Cardinal left her children and Mr. Cardinal to forage, while Mr. Cardinal, also wary of the trimmers, stood guard from the neighbors’ portico.
The mowers and blowers then arrived. The cardinal parents decided that was more noise than threat, but when the human’s machines started, they darted away, only returning after they came to that decision. They’d also concluded that those machines weren’t so bad: they kept the cat sisters at bay.
The little cardinals are growing up now and soon will be ready to leave the nest and start their own families in their dangerous world of threatening cats, humans, and the latter’s tools. Winter would come and be a threat too. But even with all that, their cardinal lives were full of joy.
Moral: Gaia’s great wheel of life continues to roll along, in spite of human technology.
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Comments are welcome.
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Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
