kids!

Kids! You take care of them, watch out for them, protect them, teach them, cherish them, brag about them, show off your pictures, and you get no respect or gratitude. Last week, as we prepared to head off to the mountains, my little wrens were tiny raw-chicken-looking, helpless, featherless, beak-fed worm-consumers. I left the garage door open about four inches and instructed the mother wren to care for them in my absence.
We returned five days later to an empty nest. No wrens anywhere in sight. A tidy empty nest. Thanks for nothing baby wrens. No fluttering, fledgling, clumsy flight instruction. No swinging from garage door cables. No spinning after landing on bicycle pedals. Only crusty, white droppings on the gas tank of motorcycle and other sundry places.
Where did you go? Where’s your last week’s rent? What colleges have you applied to? How will you make it in that great big world beyond the garage? Will you miss me?
Fine!
Don’t let the garage door hit you in the tail feathers on the way out.