The bushtits have found the suet I put out.
Bushtits are tiny feathered mushrooms of birds, very chatty and always in little surging groups, like teenagers. They show up suddenly and in force, little avian flash mobs, shouting squeaky dumb jokes back and forth as they hang by their claws from the sticky suet feeder and stuff their mini heads through the wires to get at the goods.
Another thing: I got new jeans. I washed them and put them out to dry on the porch. I went to check on their progress and was impressed by how quickly, on this hot dry day, the water rises invisibly up out of them, like some kind of laundry rapture.
Val (still in Montana) says that after a couple days of feeling peculiarly weak and somewhat yucky, she is recovering energy and vim. She’s been strolling around the ranch with Tuley; and actually, today she painted her parents’ deck. Also, in an act of terrier derring-do that might have been better timed when the neighbors were not visiting, Tuley managed to pounce on a mouse in the vicinity of the television. As Val says, “There’ll be no living with her now.”
(Tomorrow Val will drive down to Kalispell to have her one-week-after-chemo bloodwork done.)
And here in Portland it’s warm and sunny and the tomatoes are actually getting ripe (something we’ve all been taking bets on, as it was a cool, slow-starting garden year). And tomorrow I’m off to Rhode Island to visit my folks!
Deborah
Thanks for the updates Deborah, particularly about Tuley as I miss her. Travel safe
At my house we call the bushtits “bat birds” because when they are crowded onto a suet cake it reminded us of photos of bats hanging close together in a cave.
Hope it is a good visit with your family. Between your dad and Val there’s a lot of medical stuff happening! You must be expert in all kinds of hospital lingo!