I was crestfallen Wednesday to find the backyard bushtit nest, so patiently and painstakingly constructed by the adorable little birds, destroyed by scrub jays. That makes two years in a row the jays have swooped in and wreaked their special brand of havoc on my beloved bushies.
And thus I wrote about it on Facebook:
Cursed are the damnable — I say double-dawg DAMNABLE! — scrub jays who for the second consecutive spring have destroyed the nest crafted so diligently by the wee bushtit clan that had spent months making their home in the backyard victorian box tree. Leaving nothing but shreds of nesting material with nary a fragment of eggshell or chick in a wake punctuated by their shrill calls, the jays have retreated to the safe distance of a tree a couple doors down, shrieking in victory.
I inflexibly believe in the intrinsic worth of ALL creatures in the order of things, but nevertheless I have to fight hard the urge to load up my pellet gun, take a position on the roof and rid my neighborhood of a few representatives of these invading raiders who dare trespass agin me and my helpless hardworking bushies.
This morning, I followed up on Facebook, with this:
Yesterday, heartbroken and infuriated, I cursed at the scrub jays who decimated the nest the bushtits had spent months building in the backyard Victorian box tree.
I successfully curbed my righteous impulse to load up the pellet gun and use them for target practice, but that internal battle continues fresh this morning because who did I happen to spy building their own nest in that same tree? The jays!
They should not mistake my mercy for a welcome. With apologies to TLC, of them I sing:
I don’t want no scrub,
A scrub is a bird that can’t get no love from me.
Scrub jays are considered highly intelligent creatures on the whole, but this particular pair isn’t proving that belief. Despite my efforts to flail and hiss and shake the tree and act myself a fool in extending the unwelcome mat, they’ve continued to build the nest taking shape as shown in the following snap (note through the branches and leaves of the tree in the center of the frame the darkened patchwork of twigs about 18 feet up; click it for the bigger picture):
I recognize that one bird’s loss and another’s gain is the way things are and I strongly believe in the natural order and all creatures’ place in it, but by essentially putting so easy a target over my head — both too soon and so close to the scene of yesterday’s carnage — this pair of jays is making it all too easy to for me to question the respect I have to their right to live and instead entertain the notion of sweet nest-destroying revenge in the name of the bushies.
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