Faux Real

On Sunday the cardinals starting squawking and haven’t let up since. The peep-peep, peep-peep doesn’t abate from dawn until well after dusk, and a pair of cardinals dance around the edge of the garage to attack anyone who comes near.

Yesterday Chef held a chair for me while I balanced on a strained ankle winding vines. The silver lace vine is taking over the trellis on the side of the garage, and every day I wind the new vines around the posts, around and around, trying to catch the tendrils on some splinter of wood. Two cardinals swooped over our heads peep-peeping. The bright tufts on top of their heads stood erect and frantic as they jumped from one post to another, warning us away from something. Chef looked for a nest in the vines but found nothing. We moved away, not wanting to disturb whatever was bothering them.

I left for work this morning in a torrential downpour. The cardinals were quiet. I thought I would die on my way to work boxed inbetween semi-trailers on the rainy interstate, but I made it okay. When I came home tonight the cardinals were loud and insistent again as I pulled my car up to the garage. I walked my mom and sister around the yard naming plants — clematis and yucca, basil and watermelon, valerian and mint — until we arrived at the trellis. I stopped short, naming the trumpet flower and silver lace from a distance.

They will swoop at your head, I explained, pointing upward at the angry birds.

Look, a baby, my sister said. And there in the clover was a baby bird, a little brown thing with downy feathers and shiny black eyes, shivering in the neighbor’s yard and trying to fly. Screaming, the beige cardinal swooped at our heads and the red one guarded the baby on the ground. We moved away.

After three years in this house I’m well acquainted with the birds in our yard, and we’ve tried to make a better home for them as we’ve cut, trimmed, and planted. We’ve had babies and adolescents, live and dead, cardinals, bluejays, and finches, and we’ve watched them mate and fight and build nests and play in the sprinkler. We’ve hung feeders in the winter and suet in the fall. Never have I felt for them as I did this evening. For three days a bonded pair of young birds have protected a fallen baby from a flooding rain in ninety degree weather, and from the look of that baby bird, if it lives a few more days it might make it.