The Wren's Nest

            When spring fever hit this year and it was time to make our porches “user friendly”, we were surprised to find a wren’s nest full of eggs in the watering can. We carefully avoided that corner of the porch during our cleaning process, even though a party was planned in the extreme near future.

            Partly out of curiosity and partly out of a panicky feeling that the birds were running out of time before the party, we watched the nest closely.

            One morning I heard tiny, demanding chirps coming from the can and I knew the wrens were now proud parents. It was clearly a multiple birth! As we watched, sitting quite close to the nest, Mama and Papa brought all sorts of tasty treats to their babies.

            After a few days, I swear I noticed fatigue setting in. They began to look harried as they took turns back and forth to the nest, meeting constant needs. Parenthood was in full operational force.

            Mama and Papa became quite tame. We would sit on the porch as they hopped about our feet and flew right by our noses on their trips to the local “Bugs R Us” store. If we were polite we could look into the watering can and see three or four greedy beaks attached to rather scrawny necks. The minute the babies would see us they would set up a ruckus, demanding we feed them too. Fear, apparently, was not in their vocabulary.

            Then, two days before the big party, as we were in the last throes of cleaning frenzy, my nephew noticed the mama bird acting strangely, hanging on the window screen, chirping loudly. Concerned that she was somehow hung in the screen, I ran out to the porch to figure out a rescue. That’s when I saw a very wobbly baby perched on the handle of the watering can, his fuzzy baby feathers still haloed around his head, fear now clearly understood, as he listened to his mama calling him to come. I froze in place and the children stood watching at the window.

           All four chicks came out of the nest, pretty much against their wills. As they teetered off the can, plopping onto the porch floor, both parents called encouragingly to them. The babies, being fairly intelligent for their young ages, hid under the wicker chairs, refusing to come out.

           To my great alarm, both parents left. All babies began to squawk in terrified unison. Quickly their folks returned with a big juicy bug in each beak.

          Greed did the chicks in, and out they came. One flew to a parent, managing to land on the chair cushion (and pooped all over it in the process). Another got up to the chair arm. After much coaxing, they made it off the porch, into the rose bushes, and finally onto the wood pile.

           Mama and Papa flew up onto the dog house roof as the final height for their offsprings’ lesson. One by one the chicks struggled with their wings until they too were up on the roof. Victory was theirs!

            And mine too, I might add. We excitedly told the story of parenting in an eggshell to anyone who would listen, and my porch was next to godliness by party time.

            My daughter wrote a poem, with very little help from me, about the impact of witnessing this event:

                        There’s things I never saw before today –

                        Last night a comet in the sky,

                        Today I watched birds learn to fly.

                        Tomorrow God grant answers why

                        To tell me more of nature’s way.

            I only hope I am as successful in the struggle to help my daughter leave the nest one day, feeling confident that I taught her all the lessons she will need to be independent out there, soaring to her own incredible heights of winged victory.

                                   

 *This story was written when my daughter was around six or seven years old. She is now twenty-two, and has one foot out of the nest.