I Don’t Know. Maybe. Probably. I Think So. Pretty Sure, Anyway

I may be getting sick, but I’m not so sure. I was up late last night, nearly until midnight. I am a wildman. I sat in the yard and had a few drinks. Not too many, though. I felt fine when I woke up, but as the morning wore on, I started feeling not so great. My eyes are puffy. My nostrils and sinuses are inflamed, and more itchy than stuffy. Then along came everyone’s favorite: general malaise. I’m even a little chilly, despite wearing a sweatshirt. I’ll check my temperature in a bit. I just brushed my teeth.¹

In other news, I’m trying some new tricks out at the bird feeders, plural. I have two of them out there now. One is a hanging platform that I fill with safflower seed. Cardinals like safflower seed, mourning doves don’t mind it, and house sparrows will eat it, but they aren’t enthusiastic about it. I also put out a tube feeder filled with assorted good stuff that most birds love: black oil sunflower seeds, sunflower hearts, and safflower seed. Risky.

I’m trying out a homemade Magic HALO to discourage the house sparrows from raiding the tube feeder.² The basic idea is to hang some wires down around the feeder³, because sparrows don’t like that for some reason. So far, it’s working very well. The sparrows do not seem interested in dealing with those wires at all. The larger birds, like cardinals and blue jays, aren’t excited at the proposition either, but they have a platform feeder not too far away. Meanwhile, a pair of black-capped chickadees and a pair of titmice are dropping in regularly. This morning, I even saw a nuthatch having a nibble.

We had a hawk out there earlier, too. Perhaps it was a Cooper’s hawk. I don’t really know much about birds. He wasn’t real interested in either of the bird feeders. He was after a terrified squirrel in the sycamores out front. Fortunately for the squirrel, my blue jay squad was not having it. Nearly a dozen of the bald-headed bastards⁴ showed up and mobbed the bejesus out of that hawk for fifteen or twenty minutes before he finally decided to go bother someone else. Gang gang.

Blue jays are fun. I have one that hangs out in my backyard and imitates the shriek of a red-tailed hawk. I didn’t know they could do that, but they sure can. He’s good at it, too. You might even think he was a real hawk, except that he’s too low to the ground and screeches repeatedly in rapid succession for five minutes at a time, which real hawks definitely do not do. He seems to think it’s funny, and I agree.

I should take a nap.

Footnotes

1. 36.5ºC. No fever. I took an Allegra in case it’s allergies or something. I took my Repatha shot yesterday, maybe it’s related to that. The label says Repatha may cause a runny nose, sore throat, symptoms of the common cold, flu or flu-like symptoms, but the specialty pharmacist says what’s actually happening is that it makes you more susceptible to upper-respiratory tract infections. So, you don’t have symptoms of the common cold, so much as you actually have a cold. It’s probably not that. ↩

2. The problem with house sparrows at bird feeders is that a couple dozen of them will show up, chase off all the other birds, and then hang out for hours until the last seed is gone. It doesn’t matter how much seed you put out; they will eat it all. ↩

3. For all you Lisa Simpsons out there, the birds appear perfectly able to see the wires and navigate around them effortlessly. I have seen no evidence of any risk of their becoming entangled. ↩

4. It turns out, blue jays molt around now, and all their head feathers fall off. I did not know that prior to moving into a blue jay ‘hood. ↩