One consistent sign of spring's arrival is the re-hanging of the hummingbird feeders for the season. Usually sometime in May, I hear the first buzz of my little returning friends and it reminds me to whip up a batch of nectar to place into their feeder.
I then get to spend most of the spring, summer, and early fall enjoying their antics, as I hang the feeder on the edge of my porch roofline, right on the edge of my deck. Hummingbird interaction coffee time every morning is pretty grand.
Anyway, the other night the hubs and I were lounging in bed, viewing an episode of the Brokenwood Mysteries, when the boy burst into our room and screeched,
Mom! There's a hummingbird in the house!
Well, that's a new one, I thought as I rolled out of bed.
The hubs and I stepped into the dining room and took in the most peculiar sight. A lone hummingbird was repeatedly smacking itself into one of our kitchen LED lights like it was a portal to the flower plane or something. My son was bobble heading his gaze back and forth between the struggling bird and us, my face broke into that smile it always does when an adventure began, and the hubs let out a sigh that made me miss my grandpa, as he always let out this sigh of existential endurance when something ridiculous came up.
It was then that I looked down at the floor and saw the likely instigator of the hummingbird incursion. Jojo, our void of a cat was sitting calmly beneath the bird scene, chirping occasionally as she flicked her tail.
Hmm. I mused, as I scooched the step stool over towards the light fixture and the the struggling bird. The portal just wasn't working for him.
Now, if my brother had been present, the whole scene would have evaporated in just a few seconds. The bro is rather adept at catching hummingbirds. When we were kids he would stand outside on my grandma's patio, hold his hand next to one of her many feeders, and I kid you not, hummingbirds would land on his fingers. He would then cup his hands around the still creatures and just enjoy their company for a bit. It was sort of a magical and surreal hummingbird whisperer type of thing.
The hubs is also good with critters, and he stepped up on the stool, reached up his hand, cupped it around the fatigued little hummer, and captured the flighty kitchen invader.
The Void kept up her cadence of chirping throughout the endeavor.
All of us, cat included, marched outside and held our breaths as the hubs opened his hand to release the interloper back out into the wild. The little bird just sat there in the hub's palm for a spell. I think the time trying to access the kitchen light wormhole fatigued it a bit.
Suddenly, it exploded into the air and flittered away. We all cheered, including the Void, and went back to our nighttime wind down rituals.
As I stepped into the house, I looked down. Jojo was sitting on the porch staring out at the flower beds, her tail flicking lazily.
"It was you, wasn't it," I started, my eye brow arching in a most accusatory fashion.
She just flicked her tail at me in a most insolent manner, meowed, and strolled out into the yard in search of her next victim.
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's never ever has harassed a hummingbird iPhone.