Thursday, January 13, 2005

Birdseed

Ralph's latest blog about "it wasn't funny at the time" got me to thinking about an incident that happened in our home when my youngest son was still attending high school. Like now, we had bitterly cold temps and the ground was covered with snow.
It was supper time (dinner time to you city slickers), I was in my Lazy Boy reading the paper when my wife walks in, half frozen, but gleefully holding a large, empty birdseed sack. She dangled it a while and I said "what". She said,"I felt so sorry for the poor birds that I bought this big bag of birdseed and all the way from the highway to our house, (some 7 miles), I kept throwing out a handful at a time, all the way to here. Ten pounds, gone". I thought that it sounded like a noble and generous thing to do for these little creatures. Not something I would do, because I think that as farmer, I already scatter corn and bean millings and weed seed over a thousand acres. I not only support the birds but about 250 head of deer. Her effort was never the less, noble.
Thirty minutes later, my son drove in from basketball practice. He burst through the door, slammed it and half yelled, "Stupid Birds"! I lowered my paper and said "What"?
He said, "they wouldn't move tonight, they always move when a car comes along, it's like they all decided to die today".
I said, "go find your Mom, I think she's in the basement, she'll want to hear this story". He went down, and then they both came up and entered the living room and stared at me like this was somehow my fault. I lowered my paper and said "what"?
Today, you will find the birdseed in two large feeders, in our yard. It wasn't funny at the time, but, well... yeah, it was funny at the time, that's why they both came up to stare at me. Okay, I'm a sick person.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cliff

I wish I could have been there when this was happening. Great Story.

Ralph Campbell

Anonymous said...

Dad, i have heard ther story many times and you still can't get it right. it was youngest son, not your eldest.

Cliff said...

I stand corrected. I fixed it. Sorry. I'm getting old.

bridgesitter said...

That was such a great story. I'll be checking back to hear more.