Note From MarTigress:
Many thanks to maryalycea for this lovely piece! Yer faithful servant, MarTigress, is having “issues” with all things electronic. Rather than leave you without a Friday diary, I’m putting this beauty in the queue. It’s been there since April, and deserves to be seen. I hope to be able to join you at some point, but please to have a wonderful weekend.
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Previous Neighborhood stories
Jack’s Pet
Larsson Helps Out
The Golden Goose
The Diet Contest
It all started right after the big snowstorm in December when Bud and Wynn were shoveling and talking and Wynn told Bud he was afraid all this snow and cold were gonna make his wife, Peggy, even worse. Bud said, “How so? “
“Well,” Wynn said, “every year when it gets cold like this Peggy just wants to hole up. Then she gets bored so she cleans the place until everything's just about worn out. It ain't healthy. “
“Ruthie's just the same,” said Bud. “I'm thinking of getting her a bird feeder.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Wynn. “That a good hobby?”
“Well,” said Bud, “it'll mean she'll have to stick her nose out and get some air once a day. And she can’t dust the birds.”
Wynn couldn't see a thing wrong with that idea but he let it go by him at the time. Later, when he picked up the mail, the first thing he saw was a flyer from the hardware store with half a dozen different kinds of bird feeders on sale for Christmas. Then he considered that he'd never known Bud to be a fool, and he went and bought one.
And on Christmas day he had it all ready, though to tell the truth he hadn't wrapped it himself. He'd taken it along to the office one day and got Kitty in bookkeeping, who was a motherly type, to wrap it up on her lunch hour. Kitty even made a red bow about six inches across and stuck it on top the package with a ring of tape. She was like that to people who actually ate the fruitcake she brought in every year.
Anyway, on Christmas Peggy found herself looking at a big square box that she could tell Wynn hadn't wrapped. That was all right because she knew Kitty, but there was something about the shape of the box that said “toaster again.” She thought, You can tell how long people have been married by how many appliances the wife gets for presents. But she got her smile ready and opened it.
And inside was a thing like a little house with clear plastic walls and a red plastic roof molded to look like tiles and a narrow plastic bar along each side of it.
“Why, that's real cute, Wynn,” she said. “What is it?”
“Bird feeder,” he said.
“Huh?” she said.
“Hobby,” he said. “The birds come in the yard to get the food and then you watch ‘em eat.“
“Oh,” said Peggy.
Well, Wynn set the feeder up on a pole and he filled it up from a sack of something called Gourmet Tweet that also came from the hardware store and hadn't set him back much more than a decent six-pack would have. While he was setting up the pole he looked over into Bud and Ruthie's yard and saw an identical bird feeder already there.
Well, he thought, looks like Bud meant what he said. And then he didn't think any more about it. But he should have.
Because without realizing it Bud and Wynn had set up those two bird feeders so that you could see both of them from either Peggy's or Ruthie's kitchen window. And one morning Peggy looked out and she was just sighing over the fact that no birds ever showed up when she happened to look over toward Ruthie's. And perched right on Ruthie's feeder was a bright red bird with a little red topknot
on its head, picking up seeds and eating them as sassy as could be. And then another bird came that was red and gray, and it started to eat right next to the first one.
Wouldn't you know it? Peggy thought. Every day Wynn asks if I got any birds and every day I have to say no, and now that uppity Ruthie has birds and I don't even know what kind they are.
Peggy hustled out of the house and off to the mall without even a second cup of coffee, and she got a bird book.
When Ruthie called that afternoon Peggy was ready. Ruthie had seen those birds all right but she didn't know what they were either. When Peggy said they were cardinals and the gray one was the female there was silence over the phone for a minute.
The next day the cardinals came to Peggy's feeder and Ruthie didn't call. When Peggy called her, she said, “Have you seen what that Evans girl has been wearing to school lately?”
The next day the cardinals were back at Ruthie's again and so were some tiny gray and white and black birds that kept buzzing in and out of the feeder and nipping up one seed at a time to eat in a
tree. Peggy's bird book said they were chickadees. It also said they favored sunflower seeds and so did cardinals.
Hmmm, Peggy thought. There must be slim pickings for them in that seed mix. And off she went to the garden center. She bought another feeder that was a kind of bowl on a rod with a dome over it that the salesman said would keep grackles out, whatever they were, and was especially for putting out sunflower seeds. She also bought a sack of seed that was pure, one hundred percent black-oil sunflower. She brought everything home disguised in a big brown paper sack from the warehouse food store. When Ruthie left for the grocery after lunch Peggy went out and hung the new feeder from a tree.
Sure enough, early next morning there were the cardinals and by late morning the chickadees had showed up too. Peggy tried to get Ruthie on the phone, but she must have been out shopping without the car.
By the next afternoon there was a sunflower feeder in one of Ruthie's trees and some brownish little birds with black and white wings were hopping around in it. Peggy looked them up and found out that goldfinches do like sunflower seed but they like thistle seed even better. Hmmm, she thought.
The garden center man sold her a long tube with six perches sticking out of it, and it worked on the birds all right, but the next she looked Ruthie had hung up something that looked like three tubes
stuck together and had a dozen perches. And that wasn't the worst of it.
The cardinals were in Ruthie's sunflower feeder, and under her house feeder were about eight brown pigeon-shaped birds and about fourteen sparrows. And right while Peggy was watching those finches came flying in.
The last straw was the blue jay that came and started ding-donging right on top of the house feeder. Peggy went to do some vacuuming in case the phone rang.
“I don't see the problem,” Wynn said that night.
He'd seen the new feeders and they looked to him about as natural as winter watermelons hanging out there, but he'd figured never mind if the birds weren't offended.
“Oh, you don't, huh?” said Peggy. “Well, the problem is that snooty Ruthie wants all the birds to herself. “
Peggy went and bought another feeder that sat on a platform on a pole and was just like a little country cottage with a yard and artificial grass and a lot of open windows that the birds could reach into for the seed and a little flag pole for sticking up a suet ball that the garden center man highly recommended. She made Wynn set it up with a baffle on the pole to keep down the squirrels, which seemed to be increasing in number.
Wynn said, “Hell, in this weather?” And Peggy said, “You wanted me to have a hobby.”
Ruthie got a feeder that was like a little barn with a barnyard around it full of little plastic horses and cows to perch on and seed coming out of the silo. It had a dowel at each end so she could stick up two suet balls. She made Bud put it up. He saw Wynn watching him and just shrugged his shoulders. Wynn shrugged back.
Next Peggy got a little Swiss chalet with little mountains for perching and Ruthie got a pagoda. Then Peggy got a model White House and Ruthie got a Taj Mahal with a bird bath where the reflecting pool would be. Peggy countered that pretty well with a Bavarian castle just like King Ludwig's with seeds in the turrets. Wynn said, “Wasn't King Ludwig supposed to be gaga? “
“Ha,” said Peggy, “it's that Ruthie who's gaga. And I need another sack of birdseed on your way home.”
When Peggy was filling up the castle she saw Bud putting up something that looked a lot like St. Paul's Cathedral. “Now that's blasphemous,” she said to Wynn.
“I'll tell you what's blasphemous,” said Wynn, “and that's our back yard. It looks like a mile of 1955 gas stations.” Peggy's eyes lit up, and Wynn said, “I'm gonna go shovel some snow. He said it real
fast.”
Out on the front walk he ran into Bud. “Don't mention gas stations,” said Bud. “Ruthie says wouldn't it be cute if she could find one with the little red and purple crowns on the pumps.”
“I keep hoping for a pack of really mean squirrels,” Wynn said, “but Peggy's getting pretty good with a slingshot and beans, so maybe it wouldn't help.”
“Ruthie wants me to catch all the squirrels and drive 'em to Illinois,” Bud said.
They shoveled for a while and then Bud said, “How many you got now?” And Wynn said, “Fifteen,” and Bud said, “We're even then. Think we can stay that way?” And then they just looked at each other for a minute.
“Why don't we finish this shoveling after dark?” Wynn said. “Gotcha,” Bud said, “some tonight and some tomorrow night. “
Peggy and Ruthie knew right away something was wrong. “What happened to my Lincoln cabin?” Ruthie asked Bud. “Where's my Mount Rushmore?” Peggy asked Wynn. Bud and Wynn just shrugged and kept quiet.
It kept snowing and Bud and Wynn kept shoveling in the evenings, and by the end of the week they had each yard down to six feeders. Bud's van was filling up.
“Take a ride with me on Saturday,” he told Wynn. “I’m not backin’ this load up to Goodwill without moral support.”
“Okay,” said Wynn. “You know, Peggy says Ruthie's been hanging up on her.”
“Ruthie says the same about Peggy,” said Bud.
“I know that old Ruthie took my Chateau Oiseau,” Peggy told Wynn. “That Peggy has my World's Fair Globe,” Ruthie told Bud. Bud and Wynn kept real quiet. Then on Friday there was a thaw.
The path between the yards started to open up, and Peggy was on it bright and early Saturday with blood in her eye. She met Ruthie right in the middle of it.
“You give back my pueblo,” said Ruthie.
“Ha!” said Peggy. “You give back my Graceland.”
“Hand over my Trump Tower,” said Ruthie.
“Oh, good Lord,” said Peggy, “that was the most ridiculous thing I ever saw! “
“See you ladies later,” said Wynn. He and Bud were standing by Bud's garage. “Taking the van out for a while,” Bud said. “Wynn's gonna help me with some stuff. “
“Oh, God, Bud, shut up,” Wynn said. But Peggy and Ruthie were already hot-footing it over.
“Open that van,” said Ruthie. Bud and Wynn both gulped and shuffled, but the van wasn't locked. Ruthie hauled the back door open as quick as a bird and there was the evidence. “Bud, you old rooster,” Ruthie said. “And to think I was blaming Peggy, my best friend.”
“And you're just as bad, making me blame Ruthie,” Peggy said to Wynn. “She's my closest person outside of my sister. “
“You can't stand your sister,” said Wynn. Bud said, “And you said Peggy was a….”
“Bud!” Ruthie yelled. “A what?” Peggy said.
“Never mind,” Ruthie said, “I didn't mean it anyway. Point is, what are the birds supposed to do?” Peggy squinted at Ruthie but she said, “That's right. They’ve gotta eat. “
“Come off it,” said Wynn. “There hasn't been a bird here in days.”
“That's right,” said Bud. “They've probably all gone down to the corner where they can breathe. “
Peggy and Ruthie knew it was true because the seed level wasn't going down in the feeders any more. “The corner is old Mrs. Allen's place,” said Peggy. “What's she got in her yard?” said Ruthie.
“She throws old bread out on the patio,” said Wynn.
Peggy and Ruthie are down to one hopper, one tube, and one dome each. They share bird books sometimes, but not their binoculars. Peggy says hers are better for counting birds. Ruthie says hers are better for seeing their colors. Bud and Wynn figure they're both good for checking out any packages going in next door.