Tuesday, May 24, 2005

We are Friends of the Bluejay People.

Dave and I say this, sometimes, half jokingly.

Bluejays are funny, clever, bossy and gregarious. Plus they are gorgeous. We both like them. So we give them peanuts. Peanuts are their favorite snack.

Dave used to work as a social worker, and on his lunch hour he would go to the park and eat his sandwich. He also brought along some peanuts to feed the squirrels. But the bluejays would steal them from the squirrels. At first, he thought they were just doing it to be greedy, he didn't think they could actually eat something that big. But we looked it up, and sure enough, they do indeed eat peanuts and they love them. So ever since we have put peanuts out for the bluejays wherever we have lived. And consequently, we have had noisy gangs of bluejays hanging around at each of our old apts, and now in our house.

I said they are noisy, and they are. They make a variety of noises and we know them all. The funniest one is they have figured out where our bedroom is, and they JUMP on the roof of our bedroom repeatedly until we wake up and feed them. I'm not kidding! Then they look in our bedroom windows and squawk at us.

We also have a lot of wasps that live around our house, and these I consider pests. I know they probably have a good reason for being there, I should leave them alone. But I don't. I want them to go away. Sometimes I spray them with poison too. Even though I shouldn't. But, well, who's perfect? Anyway: the wasps and I are having a sort of war over the house.

Every year we get a wasp's nest in our bedroom skylight window. And it's in a spot that's very hard to get at with poisonous spray. And we can't knock it down either. Unless we get a big ladder and climb on the roof and risk being stung by many wasps while on a ladder. Which neither of us wants to do.

So my method of dealing with this is to complain to Dave and hope he will fix it. Being the woman means I get to do this right? Well, he isn't buying it. He knows I'm just as capable of dealing with it as he is. But I persist in trying to get him to do it.

One morning I was looking at the skylight and saying to Dave in the other room:

"Honey, can't you get rid of this wasp's nest?"

Dave: "No, I can't. We've been through this before".

Me: "But they are coming in the bedroom, I don't like it. There must be a way to get rid of them!"

Dave: "I don't want to get up on a ladder and spray them anymore than you do. Why don't you do it?"

Me (laughing): "Come on! I'm the*girl*, aren't you supposed to do it?"

Dave: (laughing) "Don't tell me about it, why don't you ask the bluejays?"

(during this conversation the bluejays were squawking and jumping on the roof)

Me: "OK, maybe I will!" (jokingly) "Bluejays! Please help us get rid of this wasp's nest!"

Then I got dressed and went to work. I forgot all about it.

That night, as I was getting undressed for bed, I looked up at the skylight. The nest was gone. Totally gone, not a trace of it was left.

Me: "Oh you did get rid of the nest after all! Cool! How did you do it? Did you borrow Audrey's Ladder?"

Dave: "I didn't."

Me: "What do you mean you didn't, it's gone! Did you call an exterminator?"

Dave: "No, I didn't do it. I don't know what happened."

Me: "Come on, it's totally gone! You must have done it!"

Dave: "Maybe the bluejays did it."

Me: "Really? That's crazy. Weird."

Later on Dave said he found the empty nest down by the creek with peanut shells around it. Bluejay party? I looked it up, and apparently, they eat wasp larvae too.

Cool.

UPDATE: I'd like to add here a link to a little story about bluejays by Mark Twain:

http://members.aol.com/ForduBirds/BlueJayYarn.html

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hooray for the jays who listen! -E

9:40 AM  
Blogger Sand said...

Hey K,

Ask the bluejays for a million dollars! It can't hurt right! If you find a million dollars surrounded by peanut shells you know where it came from! :)

6:28 PM  
Blogger Kate said...

I should do that! Why didn't I think of it before? LOL.

7:01 PM  
Blogger Tania said...

Sweet! I love it when animals go all Wild Kingdom, illustrating the food chain right in your house. Like, I love watching the house lizards in the Philippines eat up mosquitoes, and I get really proud of Julie when she snags a mouse. Will goes all bleeding-heart when he catches her, and he runs to put the mouse out of its misery (or stupidly let it outside to die of exposure or be eaten by a stray cat), but I kind of like letting her express her bloodlust. I'm a sicko, though.

6:58 AM  

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