Animal pals

For the theme "interspecies friendship," I had about an hour to pull something together. Originally, I was going to do a representation of the Norse myth that there's a squirrel that runs up and down the world tree, bringing gossip back and forth between the dragon at the bottom and the eagle at the top. When I was looking up the names of these animals, I found out that in the legend, the eagle actually has a hawk on top of his head! This struck me as funny so I went with just that pair.



My favorite was the super-cutesy sheep + bird. My design made no impact in the competition and remained in the bottom third. I'm pretty happy with how it came out, though.

Update on birds

I forgot to write any more about our birds. They have long since grown up and flown away, leaving only an empty nest and a scattering of crap on the landing. I could probably turn this into a metaphor for human children, but considering how many boxes of stuff I have left in my parents' attic, it would cause a bit too much guilty queasiness.

The babies were much quieter than I expected. Each time we walked by - morning, lunchtime, and after work - they were silent. Whenever I looked in, they just sat there, usually sleeping. This pic is from a month ago:


Can you see two fuzzy little heads, and a third obscured? About two weeks after that, I spotted them perching out on the plants and the railing, looking essentially fully fledged. That weekend we overheard our neighbor saying they had flown away.

Gettin' Busy With the Birds and the Bees - Minus the Bees

Today, there is another egg in the nest!

I wonder what kind of bird it is - it's pretty small and brown, which is about all I can say about it.

Bird's Nest

A bird has set up shop in our neighbor's potted plant, right outside our front door:

How cute is that? Here is a photo from our front door, demonstrating how close it is:

Kind of a funny place for a nest - it gets traffic all during the day from us and our neighbors, has a porchlight shining on it all night, and seems like it would be exposed to racoons & whatnot. Well, I hope they do well!