Sometimes Mother Nature Gives Back.

Despite my bitching about trees here lately, life is pretty good at Casa de la Stalker. I just have a passion for trees. Sometimes though, when things seem pretty shitty cuz some bureaucratic asshole wants a wider road so he cuts down all the trees and burns them or your hubby says it's ok to do away with your fruit bearing pear tree, Mother Nature says "thanks for caring" and throws you a treat.

Last year around this time, I was out in our laundry room and reaching for something on our shelf and got this flurry of wings and chirping. I jumped back to see a wren flying around our laundry room. Ok.....weird. It sat on one of my hung up shirts chirp-yelling at me and pooping on my clothing in disdain. I opened the back door and shoo'ed the little critter back into the yard with the plan to close the window on that back door to keep the little bugger out. Got what I was after on the shelf and there, braced between the WD-40 and a box of matchbooks, was a nest. Being as short as I am, I immediately went and got the Sasquatch hubby and made him look. Sure enough there were 3 eggs in the nest. I left the window in the back door open.

A few weeks later you could walk by the shelf and baby bird heads would pop up with their mouths open. We got into the habit of checking the laundry room before entering so as not to disturb feeding time. We set up a fan in the laundry room to circulate air so the heat wouldn't build in the Texas summer and kill the babies. Our laundry room was not our own. The babies did fine and ventured off one day. We missed having the babies pop up.

Since last year, we've bought new cans of WD-40, never moving the one on the shelf. We've used none of those matches. Unspoken between us, we respected the nest, neither one of us touching it, moving it or disturbing it in any way. We never have closed that window in the door.

Last week, I reached for the starter fluid for the BBQ pit for my steaks, and lo and behold but I did get a flutter of wings and chirping. I ran in to get T for the height advantage. He looked into the nest, got a great big grin on his face and lightly thumped the shelf. Up popped one baby bird head. Our diligence paid off and she hatched in our laundry room again.

Inside the nest you can see one baby resting after hatching and 2 more eggs. One of the babies has moved out of the nest and into the box of matchbooks next to it. I do believe we will follow the same nest policy as last year. We love having them in there. We really don't mind being careful in our own laundry room for something this wonderful. We really appreciate the gift this really is.

In crochet news:

My dog is a butthead. I know, this is supposed to be about crochet and the shawl. Bear with me. The shawl is progressing nicely, if a bit slow, and I am still enjoying the heck out of it. I went to photograph the progress the other day so I stretched it out on the couch, turned to grab my camera and turned back to find Alex laying on it. So I reach to move him. He growls. Butthead. Fine, he gets to be in the picture. I gently move the shawl out from under his hairy butt, him growling the whole time and throw it across him.

This picture shows the butthead having gotten his way and the edge of the shawl and the pattern.


This picture shows the butthead now bored with having gotten his way and almost half of the shawl. It's huge, people. It's gonna be.....huger. Or something.


Shawl status? 78% w00t! The score is Mamma-1, Shawl-0, Butthead - negative 15. :oP

Update:

For those of you coming over from Yarn Harlot, welcome! Have some ice tea, relax, leave a comment and get stalked Hehe.

Y'all, Steph's gonna be in Austin on July 29th. I'm there. Who wants to hook up and give her a real Texas welcome? Yeehaw, baby!!!