River and the Bird Nest Catastrophe

We don't have a basement.  We have a crawl space. When my parents lived in their condo during the year 5 B.R.S (Before River Song) their basement flooded.  This upset Mommy terribly. She was happy to move into a house with no cellar — no worries about flooding, no downstairs laundry, no shelter from tornadoes. Well, two or of the three ain't bad.

Cellars are a great place to store unwanted items.  You can keep half a century's worth of junk down there with room to spare.  When you have a crawl space, clean outs need to be done more frequently.

My parents stuff things in the crawl space until it begins to lift the house making the floors crooked.  Then they call Fred Sanford to take half a decade of accumulated items away. Thus started the emptying of the shed and crawl space clean out.  

My Dad figured with the junk man coming it would be an excellent time to trim the tree branches. He cut away the limbs from the pines that slapped my parents in the face when they walked by it or were growing into the shed. Cut them down bag them up,  and leave them for the junk man. What could be easier?

The cutting down part was a snap. It was the bagging that proved problematic. While picking up the many pine branches, he found a perfectly round bird's nest. He felt terrible about robbing some bird of her home. He found a branch that he could safely place the nest on and feel good about himself.

Feeling like he had just done his part in saving the environment, he went back to work picking up the branches. Then he made a horrible discovery.  There were baby birds that had either just been born our their shells had cracked on the lawn. They were wrapped up in some sort of protective webbing. They weren't strong enough to break through it yet. Daddy didn't know what stage of The evolutionary process the birds were experiencing, but he was sure they weren't supposed to experience it on the grass.

Most people whose lives don't revolve around animals would have moved the birds to the mulch, covered them up and declared. "it Is God's will.'  But we have raised them up better than that. Daddy knew he had to try and save the babies

He did with all men who have screwed up badly and were flummoxed how to fix it did. He called over mommy.   She suggested that the birdies be placed back in the next. Of course, Daddy being a man of tiny brain had forgotten what branch he had put the nest on.  The little birds were squawking on the ground. He found the nest and brought it to them. Mommy used to trowel to pick up the birds, and they were placed back in the nest.  The nest was put back in the tree. My parents could only hope that the mother lived up to the reputations of bird brains and did not notice that the best had been relocated several branches to the left, out could tell the birdies had encountered humans.

When we have gone outside to do our business, we have checked under the tree, and there has been no sign of discarded little birds. Ignorance can truly be bliss.  As long as there is no sign of the birds, we can assume they are fine even if the dark thoughts in the back of the mind say differently.

Fly high little birds whenever you are.