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| One day, these young squirrels ran away but stuck around to be the first ones back at the food. |
I wake up around 5 AM and make pour-over coffee. Sassy walks into the kitchen and I pretend to be startled. She smiles some days. On other days, she looks at me like, "Old joke. Try harder." She smiled this morning and she got her usual allotment of 1/2 Johnsonville brat in small slices.
Most birds are not up before dawn. They enjoy feeding on a bright, sunny morning. I have a bargain mix of corn and peanuts in the shell for them. Another bag has shelled peanuts, various dried fruits, and sunflower seeds.
One morning there were leftover tangerine halves plus the bargain mix on both garbage barrel tops. The scene was quite funny. The squirrel was boldly eating, sitting up. Starlings tried to dive bomb him off the barrel. Only a few inches away, a blue jay called out at him and jumped each time, as if, "Get off and I mean it, now!" The squirrel wanted his breakfast and refused to budge, so I opened the door and all fled.
Squirrels run away as little as possible, so the birds stayed away too. Eventually the food was eaten at various times. No matter how much birds and squirrels love free food, they never eat all of it. If a flock comes in - starlings, grackles, sparrows - they take turns and leave. Flocks depend on scouts to see if it is safe, and they follow the lead of the most anxious bird in leaving when anything threatens.
Birds gather to await their next meal. In Phoenix we had permanent resident doves sitting on the pool fence. They had a dove block and daily tosses of sunflower seeds.
In Midland I bought leftover popcorn after a student exhibition - two large garbage bags full. That night inches of snow fell and I had the bird-feed no one wanted a few hours before. (We heard the announcement over the PA system - I alone showed up - "We have leftover popcorn we would like to sell.") Every day I spread popcorn over the snow. Soon a flock of doves remained in the pines. Whenever I stepped outside, they all cooed in pleasure at once. "Breakfast is served!" They also enjoyed a second meal each day.
I noticed in the summer (Midland) that the same area featured constant visits by birds. I set up a compost pile encased in chicken wire. Lots of tasty arthropods and earthworms worked on the finishing product, and birds perched on the wire to pounce on food. In human terms, it was a sushi bar, constantly refilling itself with wiggling high-protein food.
I no longer make compost in wire bins. Instead, mulch made from shredded wood and leaves serves as compost. The birds love to rest above the mulch and pounce on food. Someone called a mulched garden, "The biggest bird-feeder around." Every living source provides for others. Nothing is wasted, as John 6 revealed when the multitude was fed miraculously.
Many miss the point of divine engineering. The Son of God, the Creating Word (Genesis 1, John 1) fashioned every living thing with a purpose, sometimes with more than one purpose. An earthworm devours bacteria, which digest the food drawn in by the worm. The earthworm's all muscle-body, with bristles attached to each segment, pushes and wiggles its way through soil -
- Aerating the ground
- Providing channels for rain
- Adding usable calcium to improve the root zone
- Fertilizing with nitrogen compounds
- Offering itself, unwillingly, as food for many creatures and fishermen
- Donating eggs for future generations
- Dying to give a last burst of nitrogen compounds to the garden.
If an earthworm can do so much in its lifetime, how much more has God designed us to do in ours?
