I
can’t look the other way any longer. The signs are all there, staring me in the
face. And D’ Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt…no, no. Time face the facts.
Wrens are using my studio as cover for a bug trafficking operation.
My
suspicion should have been roused the first time I caught the male wren
returning, a few days after the kiddos hopped the nest. All the hubbub had
finally died down, and now that the last little grouchy little grandpapito had
made that great leap of faith off of the window sill; things had finally
returned to the peacefull post partum period I have come to expect this time of
year.
So
I was surprised to see the little brown male wren hop through window and make a
hasty b-line over to my kitchen area, pausing only for a startled moment on my
stereo when we discovered one another. We eyed one another with surprise and
suspicion. “What are you doing back here?” I wondered. He only begrudgingly
acknowledging me with a tip of his beak. “Oh hey, whats up?” he seemed to
mumble. Talk about awkward. After all we had been through, this is all I get?
“Oh hey, what’s up? I just came to get a few things….”…? and then he went on
his way rummaging through my kitchen.
And
so the traffic began. Now, I might have a spider here or there hiding in a
corner of my studio, but I don’t have the kind of merchandize that these cats
are slinging. Big fat beige grubs, dangling from their beaks, where are they
getting these things from?
My
theory is that they are mining these things from somewhere across the street in
front of my studio. And that their nestlings are still holed up some where
behind my studio.
So
rather than take the risk of shuttling these things over the vast black expanse
of my roof top, the safer little wren thing to do would be to cut through the
‘thicket’ of my studio, their old neighborhood. They know the sculpture, every
tire branch, the circuit hopped from one sculpture to another has been etched
into the micro circuitry of their reptile brains.
And
so it is, that my studio, with its wide low ceiling, and perches galore
provides the perfect foil for transporting a bumper crop of bugs.
Have
they offered me a cut of the action, for safely harboring their nefarious
activities? Ha! They fly through like they own the place! And I, like a poor
peasant, watching through drawn curtains as the narcos conduct their business
in the street, endure and wait.
