Relative Something

Busy birds are building nests and doing their courting dances this time of year. Some of them need to establish their territories and discourage competition from other possible suitors. This year, more than any other previous time, more than one bird has taken to facing off against their reflections in our windows. The first year we were here, there was a cardinal that the sellers warned us about. He came back annually enough times that they eventually named him.

They named a variety of wildlife that made repeated visits, so that wasn’t so strange. Rodney the Cardinal showed up for about two years after we arrived and then vanished.

Now we are getting both Robins and Cardinals clacking their beaks against our windows. And not just the males.

Yesterday morning, a female Cardinal showed up at the door in our bedroom that opens to the back deck. Fluttering wings and a pecking beak tapping away at its reflection.

The sun wasn’t up yet, but the songbirds were. This one was tapping up and down on the full glass door as I was checking my phone for results from the MN Wild hockey game that went into overtime and forced me to go to sleep without knowing the result.

Cyndie’s morning sleep cycle was interrupted by the feathered alarm. That ultimately paid off for me because her earlier-than-usual start contributed to her feeling ready to join me in the morning feeding of horses for the first time since breaking her ankle last November.

I was really glad I had chosen not to keep watching the playoff hockey game after the third period ended with the score tied around 11:30 p.m. They ended up needing more than half of a second overtime period before one of the teams got the puck past the opposing goalie. The game ended at 1:00 a.m. and I had been in dreamland for an hour and a half by that time.

Happily, it was the Wild team that triumphed in game 1 of this best-of-7 first-round series of the Stanley Cup playoffs against the Dallas Stars.

Game 2 happens tonight and I am hoping it gets decided in just 3 periods. As it is, games ending at 11:30 at night are already keeping me up past my healthy bedtime. Also, I’m not feeling up to the stress of watching the drama of sudden-death overtime hockey.

The Gopher hockey team losing their NCAA Championship game against Quinnipiac just 10 seconds into overtime did me in. I no longer have the fortitude to watch overtime playoff hockey. Not for a while, anyway.

Not while the wild birds are feeling a need to peck against our glass doors and windows at too-early-o’clock in the morning.

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