Jake isn’t much of a talker. Out of my three kids, he’s the one that’s the biggest mystery to me. I see things in him though that remind me of myself when I was young, so I get it. And considering that communication with Jake often consists of things like, “I’m going to work, bye,” I always feel fortunate when he occasionally feels more chatty.
So I was working at my desk yesterday when my phone rang. I picked it up and was greeted with, “You’ve got to stop cleaning these windows with Windex!”
Immediately detecting a note of humor in Jake’s voice, I was pleasantly surprised.
“I don’t clean them with Windex,” I said. (I have a special cleaning cloth for glass.) “Wait, what windows,” I asked?
“The front ones.”
He was going to make me work for this. “And why should I not be cleaning them?”
“Because,” he said. “I was sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal and watching the t.v. in the living room when I heard a huge thud against the window. Scared the crap out of me!”
I was laughing by now. “What was it?”
“A Blue Jay.”
“Is it dead?”
“No, I don’t think so. He fell down in the grass but he’s moving around.“
“Okay,” I said. “Well, keep an eye on him, I guess. I don’t want a dead Blue Jay laying in the yard.”
“Mom, I can’t keep him from dying!”
“I just mean that if he does die, scoop him up and throw him in the trash barrel or something. I’ll feel bad if he dies and I see him laying there dead.”
“I don’t think he’s gonna die,” Jake said. “I think he’s just stunned.”
“Good,” I said. “Well, much as I’d love to continue discussing birds who fly into windows, I need to go back to work.”
“Okay,” Jake said. I could still hear the laughter in his voice. Man, it’s good to hear him that way. I worry about him sometimes. He’s so … inside himself most of the time.
When I came home from work, there was no dead Blue Jay in my yard. Pretty sure he’s got a whopper of a headache, wherever he is.
Come to think of it, you’d think these guys would get headaches too:
The one who's been poking holes in my pine tree...
I can relate to Jake since I’ve never been able to communicate or connect with my father.
woodpeckers – in Miami they work from 3AM to 5AM, you know, that key sleep time before rising for work.
I guess that is the reason our windows are not clean here: we have a contract with the local bird population.
Nice catch with the woodpecker. We hear more than we see; especially in the summer when there is lots of coverage.
We used to have a mountain ash tree in our front yard, and the fermented berries had the birds trying to fly through our picture window!
Ah, the down-side of “doing windows!” Poor bird. We don’t have that problem about here, which makes me wonder, “Think you could bring your Windex to our house?”
Hugs,
Kathy
Jake communicates as much as my son does with me. Though usually we talk through text messages.
And with my two nosy dogs, my windows have sometimes taken on a semi frosted look that no bird would miss.
That’s cute. My kids “never” call me. Occassionally they text me with things like “can I have money?”
I’m glad the bird came around, or at least I hope that’s why it’s gone. I’ve wondered how woodpeckers keep from getting headaches too. Beautiful photo!
Tell Jake that I don’t think the Windex or whatever cleaning method you use on your windows is the culprit here cause we used to have cardinals who repeatedly flung their selves against our double windows in my living room and trust me, it wasn’t because they were always sparkling clean! LOL It does make you wonder though about those birds and their survival rates with window hits, doesn’t it?
Always unfortunate when birds fly into windows. When I worked downtown, we would periodically see dead birds on the sidewalk that had slammed into the glass windows and fell several stories. Woodpeckers are pretty awesome and they have some form of cushion in their head to keep their brain from sloshing around. Maybe we should emulate that for sports athletes!!
We must have some pretty birdbrained birds around here, ’cause they fly into our deck windows all the time – and I never clean them. (Ok. Hardly ever.) Come to think of it, they’re probably after the crumbs that are always left on the breakfast table…..
Jake sounds so much like my 19, almost 20 year old. Very much to himself… always locked up in his room.. but when HE comes out for work the conversation goes like this: Me – “Heading to work?” Him – “mmhmm” so I’m jealous you get a whole line.
My husband gets inside himself like that … so, I know how it feels to be the one on the outside …. wondering …
I tell my hubs that’s why I don’t wash our windows very often. I have empathy for the birds, even bluejays.
The last thing you need in your yard is a dead bird — you don’t want excess wildlife lying around for Lucy to sample (some carry rabies, you know).
You’re supposed to CLEAN windows?? Hmm. There could be a very good reason I’ve never seen a bird fly into any of my windows.
You would think that woodpeckers would get headaches. Or dizziness. Or something! Maybe they have shocks in their head that absorb all that.
Occasionally we have birds that take off from our bird table and fly in the wrong direction, straight into our kitchen window…
I am cracking up! That might have been the best phone conversation EVER!
Occasionally a bird flies into my living room window and it sounds so loud. None have died from it yet but they are sure stunned for awhile. Glad your bird made it. I sometimes think I need to put up caution tape across the window but that would be ugly. Oh well.
We have a large window with no covering over our dining room table. Because of the CA sun, we had a film put on the windows and it’s slightly reflective from the outside, To the birds, it looks like trees and sky. Once a month or so we hear a thump and find a “bird print” on the glass … and occasionally a dead bird on the patio cover. I suspect that the Copper hawk who hunts in our yard chases them into the window then carries them off.