Kickass and nesting mistakes

Kickass, the doorstop dog, frequently joins the keeper and many other “birder” types in escaping the travail of life by witnessing antics in the avian world; and with the approach of the nesting season there is ample opportunity to not only bird watch but to take some comfort in noting that birds screw up too: this April it is the starlings as they build a nest in an eaves trough down-spout.  They have been at it for several weeks, making countless trips to the corner of the roof and disappearing into the down-spout with nesting material.

As a journalist, the keeper wrote stories about nesting robins delaying important building construction, nesting mallards causing a railroad to abandon a side track, crows postponing the opening of an amusement park by nesting on top of the roller-coaster, and Canada geese closing the front door of a large corporation by nesting in the entrance shrubbery.

The keeper tries not to equate these birdie home-making goof-ups to the fact that he and Phyllis are in the process of re-nesting from Mazomanie to Madison.  That will mean, of course, that they will not witness the first major downpour gushing through the Mazomanie downspout with catastrophic results for the starlings.

The keeper says he is cool with that since he and Phyllis have their own nesting issues to deal with, like how do you downsize from a lifetime of collecting nesting material excess?