"Single Mother"

[bill and Dale]

Everybody,
      This may seem off topic but really with a little stretch it's not.
I want to tell a little story, please indulge me.

       She's a single mom and she's doing the best she can to get by.
Three hungry mouths to feed.  She does what she has to do.  She kills.
All day long from morning til night. She murders them one at a time.
Gypsies mostly, that's her specialty, but she'll kill others too when
the opportunity presents itself. Sometimes she stalks at night, easy
pickins when I forget and leave the back deck light on.  The cousins of
the Gypsies come to the light and she's right there anyway so she leaves
the little ones and grabs a quick bite.
      This spring a pair of Eastern Phoebes set up housekeeping in an
old Barn Swallow nest on the exhaust vent from my bathroom fan on the
backside of my house. The first brood wasn't successful but about two
weeks ago a heard a couple of little peeps and thought, "that's good
they're raising another family." The same day I found one of the adults
dead by the side of the road, the male I think. For the next two days my
single mom called incessantly for her mate to come help with the chores.
She'd chirp for five minutes nonstop with two or three caterpillars in
her beak, give up and go feed the kids herself. I know I'm
anthropomorhizing. I'm giving human characteristics to a bird. But the
point I'm getting to- she's a master predator of the hordes of gypsy
moths flying in my yard. She kills dozens, maybe hundreds, every day;
snatches them right out of the air, anticipates their crazy flight path,
hovers, bill snaps with an audible click and another gypsy bites the
dust. It's beautiful. It's unexpected. If you watch the erratic,
unpredictable flight of male gypsies it's hard to imagine anything
catching up with them. But maybe the flight of gypsies only seems
unpredictable to my untrained human eye. My single mom seems to see the
pattern clearly, she has the eye. Anyway as the hordes of gypsies grow
I'm rooting for my Phoebe family. I hope mom can keep up the pace and
the little ones make it. We could use three more Gypsy killers.
                                                                   Bill
Yule