Thursday, June 25, 2009

My promise

I have looked at a number of blogsites--just to make sure I was doing things correctly, not that I ever was obsessed with convention or doing what everyone else does. But something struck me as I read some of these blogs. The blogger sites tend to be overrun with neophyte philospher kings. For example, they tell a story then go on to proselytize about how to behave or how to feel or how to make the most of life. "The moral of the story is yada, yada, yada."
My aim with my blog is not to tell or advise you on how to live your lives. I will try my darnedest not to sermonize. If I want to say something profound, I'll try to keep it brief. In short, I promise not to preach, for preaching is self-serving and allows one to place him or herself above others. I am above no one. Hey, was that sermon-like? I hope not.
So, I promise not to blogosophize, okay?
What I want to do in my blog is entertain, tell you stories about our animals, other peoples' animals, and the honesty of animals. I want to entertain. If I slip into blogosophizing, scold me: scold me well.

I am, admittedly, a bit of an odd sort. After a terrific wind storm, I was giving Curly, our Selkirk rex cat, his daily ride in the golf cart. Yes, we have a cat, actually two cats, who love to feel the breezes rushing through their fur as I fly with them on the cart around the out-lying pastures and around our woods. Anyway, a bird's nest had been dislodged from its tree branch and lay on its side in the driveway.
I stopped the cart and got out, picking up the nest and setting it alongside Curly. Such a nicely built structure I had seldom seen: fine pieces of straw so tightly knit together with strands of horse hair--some of it white, which had to have come from my horse, Bo's, tail, and all stuck together with what looked like dried mud, probably from the pigs' wallow. Such work, such determination, such drive went into the building of a nest, I thought. It resembled a hollowed-out grapefruit--heavy, pleasingly palpable--a pretty neat feat of engineering--for a birdbrain.
Somehow the bird's nest ended up in the back seat of my car, and when we took my parents for lunch today, my mother laughed as she crawled alongside me in the back.
She said, staring at the nest on the floor in front of her, "You've got a bird's nest in the car?"
"Yep," I said. "Isn't it neat!"
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Put it on the mantel."
"You're nuts," she said, laughing.
"Yep. I've got a collection of bird nests I've found around the patch. They're all lined up over the woodstove on the mantel. "
With some incredulity, my mother said, "Why?"
"They're the finest art pieces--ever. Why wouldn't I want to display birds' nests? Now, that's the question."
"You're weird," my mother said and laughed.
"Yeah. I know."

1 comment:

  1. Wow, none of the nests in my collection have horse hair in them! I'd love to see some pics of the four leggeds you are talking about.

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