URSINE INFESTATION

Clivia from Cate blooms six months later.

BIRDLAND IS BRIGHT AND A BIT WARMER THIS MORNING. I step outside to feed the dogs, and something down the lane catches Ursula's eye. She trots over and gives it a sniff. From where I stand, walking to the garage to offer kibble, it looks like a basket. Ursula turns back to the sound of kibble raining down into the silver bowl. The dogs eat, and I walk over to check out the mysterious object. It is the bird feeder that usually hangs outside our kitchen window holding suet cakes, pulled down and broken open. Only one suet cake was left, locked in its little cage. We like to watch woodpeckers (red belly and the smaller downy woodpecker) from our kitchen. Sometimes a gang of sparrows come to raid the suet.

A Downy Woodpecker visits.

Who could have pulled it from its cast iron hook high above the backyard flower bed? I decided to query the usual suspects.

"Not I," said Ursula, the crafty black dog. "I am but a humble pup. Low to the ground. I could never jump all the way up there."

"Who me?" asked Cullen, the sweet brown dog. "What's going on, guys? Can I help? What you got there?" He has finished his kibble and run out to join us, his tail wagging his whole body, he joyfully tosses his head. I pick up the broken bird feeder and carry it back to the house. It's a mystery.

Red Bellied Woodpecker

Who could have pulled it down? I need a chair from the kitchen to fill it, and even then, I have to stand on tiptoes and gently lift it from the bottom to pull the wire over the hook. My husband is taller than I am, but Michael even has to stand on an old stump, though he can easily reach it from there. It had to be someone tall, who could stand on two legs and reach eight feet in the air. It had to be someone strong, who could pull it down with ragged paw, because now I see that the wire has snapped. Imagine, for a moment, a shaggy brown figure, shambling across the yard, stopping to sniff, trembling nose high in the air, pointing her head this way and that, to test the breeze. She detects a scent of fat and sunflower seed and changes directions to head straight for the bird feeder.

Another view of the Clivia

She pauses directly below and then lumbers to her hind legs. If we had been watching from the kitchen, we might have seen a stealthy brown paw reach up from below the frame of the window to bat at the caged suet cakes, setting the feeder to swing wildly until one terrible claw extended to hook around the wire hanger rips it from its hook. I ponder for a moment and remember that my grandmother knew the exact year the last black bear in Piatt County was killed. I wish now I’d written it down. She probably knew who shot it, too. It was before she was born, but she recollected having to sit on her own grandmother's bearskin rug as the old woman regaled the grandchildren with stories. She never claimed the coveted stool that sits now by my uncle’s fireplace, since it was always occupied by her elder cousins. All through my own childhood we used to fight to sit on the same stool. I realize that Piatt County bears were black, not brown, and revise my image from a shaggy brown paw to a sleek black one batting at the bird feeder.

Or maybe it wasn't a black bear either, but what my father used to call "little brother bear," a raccoon, or a whole gang of them, clambering up the hackberry tree that stands at the corner of our house, to drop down onto the bird feeder, making a swing of it until their weight breaks the wire hanger and the feeder drops to the ground, suet and all. They tussle it over to the driveway and break open three out of four of the cages and lumber away with the suet.

I hear the door open and Michael comes out with his coffee. He listens as I tell him my two theories about the suet cage. He picks it up and looks at the wire closely, pointing to where it’s rusted through. Leave it to my husband to spoil a couple of perfectly good theories.

Visualize Beauty; Imagine Peace; Blessed Be