Tweet
For the past two weeks, damn huge hawks have been making and tending a nest in our roof, plumb above my desk.
For two weeks, day and night, it’s been a din of scraping claws and flapping wings, squawk, squawk squawking and bits of debris falling through the cracks of the little-insulated (despite its layers of styrofoam) ceiling – onto my head and the surrounding area.
If you saw my desk, you’d think packing crates.
Unnerved by deadlines, pending news, bills, two weimeraners (he and demi-he) tearing into their power struggle downstairs, yelps and yaps and skids (I’m regularly trying to discern from the distant crashes and thuds what exactly is being annihilated) – last week I became the birds’ crabby downstairs neighbour.
I was 4-H about it at first, filled with tenderness that some majestic winged beasts had chosen to nest in my home. Then I began to loathe them.
At first I could stand the kerfuffle for a good fifteen minutes – an indulgence that decreased with bad alacrity. By day three, five minutes of noise had me reaching for the broom to bang on the ceiling; by day five, at first scrape my mind teemed with murderous thoughts.
By day seven, I’d become verbally abusive and rolled out my full repartee of what I hoped were terrifying animal sounds. (The first time it freaked the hell out of Dean; the birds merely snickered.)
Each round of invectives and pounding brought only electric brief silence, a quiet hail of straw, twigs and styrofoam from above settling on the keyboard. Then scritch scratch hail bwaaak bwaaak flap caw rustle flap scrawwwwwk, hailstorm. And on and on and on through the day. Blasting headphones barely muffled the brouhaha.
So again this morning early I was there, broom at hand, going over my battle plans for the day – waiting, just waiting and… nothing.
Come on, come on…
Then I heard them. Hungry little peeps. During the night, the eggs had hatched. And a sudden darling tranquillity now above my head, sweet silence aloft.
Come on…
There’s the occasional rustle of mother shifting in her nest, rearranging the furniture, a flurry when she comes back with food… but mostly they’ve settled into a quiet routine, and seldom play their music past ten. Tweet sweet tweet and lullabies.
So of course I now feel like the stereotypical old crank at the end of all kiddie flicks: moved and softened and subdued – a puddle of emotion in the stands as gimpy Danny wins it for the home team against all odds in the last breath-held second of the game… making grateful group hug plans to spend Thanksgiving with them before they migrate, weepy, arms full of seedcake and booties as the final credits roll and oh, gosh…
(While knowing full well that if they return next year for the sequel, I shall be doubly irritated. Ah, featherweight love.)
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