On a Wing and a Prayer

Regardless of their size, the wild life around here, and I assume everywhere else in the world, definitely lets you know when you, as a member of that group that they call "the Big Clumsies" but which we are pleased to call "human beings," unwittingly place yourself smack in the middle of their reproductive affairs.

This morning while divesting myself of some extraneous bodily fluid in front of one of my sheds --- a luxury of outdoors living that isn't ordinarily available to men with the bad luck or the bad taste to have to live in cities, though very few rural women avail themselves of the privilege either --  two small birds, a female and a male, started flitting around in that very recognizable perturbed state.  I don't know what kind they were, though they looked like cedar waxwings, which we rarely see.

I was surprised and puzzled, because I could think of no possible place anywhere near where I was standing that they could have built a nest.  But after I finished and turned around, I saw that there had indeed been a tiny nest right behind my head, perched on the end of a decorative strip on the shed door, a strip only three-quarters of an inch thick!   And here it is:   

They must be planning on raising some really midget offspring!   But meanwhile there's the question of how that nest can even stay there, given the laws of physics.   But as always, this pair didn't consult with me first on the engineering problems involved, and so there it is.   It's a good thing that I don't have to open that door for anything much and anytime soon.

I lived in this shed during the first several years while I commuted from D.C. building my house.    It consists of twelve demountable sections that I made in my basement in D.C. and brought down here in a U-Haul truck.  This means that even today I could easily disassemble this building and put it up somewhere else, at the cost only of having to re-shingle it.  Right now, though,  this shed is full of stuff that uncomfortably reminds me of the good old days when, even as a young adult, all that I owned to my name was a chess set and a modest shelf of books.  Now look!  And this isn't the only or even the second or third such structure on the premises.

Meanwhile here's my now 32-year-old yet  never quite finished 1,400 sq.ft. "green oak" house, looking at it from the southwest:   And obeying the  true American ethic it's extra-crammed with things -- because of Wife.  (She doesn't read this weblog.)