Crow with sandwich

In retrospect, there were always clues. But I, as a human, am wired for obliviousness. We evolved to be aware of crouching tigers, but undue stress is not good for us. So most of us conduct our days in perfect ignorance of the dramas being played out all around us. We notice only the aberrations, and then try to assign them to something familiar. Sudden shadow? It’s a cloud passing over the sun, not Godzilla rearing up over the city. Most of the time, we’re right.

Which brings us to our birdbath. Which is disgusting, on a daily basis. More disgusting than I have been able to account for.

I clean it out every day, of course. And by “every day,” I mean every day I think about it and have the hose nearby. So, maybe twice a week. Which is not being a good bird mommy. Birds should have clean water. Mine have clean water twice a week for a few hours. Then the crows show up.

The crows are the problem. I never see any of our chickadees rinsing their bug sandwiches in the birdbath. But crows take every bit of crap they find and bring it to our birdbath. We have finally gotten our personal crows to come within an inch of us for a peanut, and they’re mighty handsome up close like that, so we’re favorably disposed. But honestly. We once put out a stale salami and cheese sandwich for our favorite crow and watched as he took it to the bird bath, pulled it neatly apart, bread-salami-cheese-peperoncini-bread, booted out the peperoncini, reassembled the whole thing in the correct order, and flew away with it. BooBoo doesn’t care for peperoncini, but there isn’t much else he turns his pointy snoot up at.

Which is a problem for our birdbath. I bought a cute little battery-operated water-wiggler for it, only to watch the thing struggle against the daily accumulation of ick.

The other day I detected the stench of something dead in the south garden and traced it, correctly, to the voodoo lily in bloom. There were flies everywhere. I don’t think much of flowers that smell like rotting corpses but, across the faunal spectrum, tastes differ. This plant wants to attract flies to pollinate it, and attract it does. I don’t know what’s in it for the flies. Maybe something, but maybe they just tromp all over the flower looking for the yummy corpse, and fly off dejected, generation after generation. That flower gets them every time.

The very next day I was on the other side of the garden, where we have no voodoo lilies, when I suddenly came upon a flash mob of flies. A flynado. An aberration. I’ve been around the block a few times and I stopped in my tracks to look for the dead critter. Could be cat poop, I thought hopefully, but a quick scan turned up nothing. Until I glanced down at my feet, which were a mere six inches away from a small, defunct rabbit, fairly fresh but already missing several key portions. Bingo.

We’ve only had rabbits in the yard here for three or four years. Stood to reason we’d trip over one that was permanently retired, eventually. I wasn’t thrilled with it, but at least it must have been encouraging for flies that have recently been humiliated once again by a flower. It was a fly redemption story.

I scooped up the offending ex-rabbit and slid it in the yard debris container, a.k.a. Thumper Dumper. You’re allowed to put your chicken bones in the yard debris container and I figured the bunny counted, even though I didn’t personally dine on it. But someone had. It was definitely not an operable rabbit.

Later I had another look at the birdbath. Oh good lord. That’s bunny sludge in there.

I’m on board with the Circle of Life, in principle. But there are parts of the circumference I’m okay with skipping over.