Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The Cardinal Rule

Part 3 for "You can learn a lot from watching animals." Today's class will be self defense.

Our cat, Dustbunny, is the escape artist. Being nature lovers, we try hard to keep her in, but she's developed this ability to teleport from any part of the house to a door that is opening. As a result, we have had many funerals for shrews, because she has an uncanny knack for hunting them.

Yesterday Dusty escaped in the morning. Later, when my son went out, we all heard him yell angrily, "Dusty! Let it go!" We ran out to find her holding down a cardinal. Marina thinks it was a fledgling because it still had brown baby feathers. He was squawking angrily. The kids held back the cat while I scooped up the bird and checked to make sure it had no puncture wounds. I figured if anything were wrong, we could bring it to our wildlife rehabilitator friend.

Can you picture the Steve Irwin moment coming? As I looked it over, it grabbed hold of a soft part of my finger and would not let go. Ow! I set it on a branch, figuring it would decide it made its point and fly off. Still it hung on. Ow! Now you would think that somewhere in his little bird brain, he would realize that flight would be a better idea than fight, but he wasn't going to let my size scare him. Ow! I had to use my free hand to pry the tip of its beak apart. Finally it decided to let go and flew off into the trees. Apparently he's OK, because later he returned to have a snack at our feeders. The little ingrate. I took a picture of him.

cardinal

And so today's lesson is: The bigger they are, the harder you bite.

2 comments:

TobyBo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
TobyBo said...

#231

You sure do have some wild and crazy adventures. :)

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