Kickass parenting with the robins

Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper, as he does his morning bike ride to nowhere, has been joined recently by a pair of robins tending to young in a nest just outside the bedroom window.

The birds’ constant activity symbolizes the energy it takes to be a parent, and, it reminds the keeper of how nice it is to be past some of the early parental demands—stuffing worms into their yawning craws, and the endless unpleasantness of keeping them clean.

That part of parenting is over and done in the blink of an eye, and then there is the chirping concern over the offsprings’ fledging blunders and their inclination to crash into windows or roost within reach of a cat.   For the robins, that parental stage of chirping concern only lasts a couple of weeks; for the keeper and his ilk it goes on forever.