Beeper, the bird who proved the saying

Have you ever noticed how many bird sayings there are?? The early bird gets the worm, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, etc. Why is this?

Anyway, I got sidetracked. I am here today to tell you the story of Beeper. Beeper was a little zebra finch I had. He was named by my hubby, who has names for everything (see older post). He got his name because he beeped a lot. On early sunny mornings he had another name, which I won't put here (trying to keep it clean folks ;). Beeper even had a wife later on in life - Mrs. Beeper. And they had babies, and the one we ended up keeping was, yes, you guessed it, Baby Beeper.

But none of this matters. The story is starting to get lost, so I will now begin.

Beeper spent his summers in a cage on the back deck. He loved it out there. Other birds would often come land on his cage and chat with him. Sometimes they would eat some of his millet that was hanging on the side. He was a very tiny bird and even the smallest of wild birds were like giants to him.

One day Beeper found out he could slide through the bars of his cage. I chased him around the backyard trees for hours with a butterfly net and a towel (how I usually caught him inside). He wasn't a good flier because he hadn't had much practice. But he was getting it now.

For three days, I couldn't catch him. He stayed nearby though and I could hear him taunting me and beeping while I laid their sunbathing.

On the fourth day, I heard the familiar beep once again. It sounded close. Really close.

No lie, he was in his cage.

He had come back. (I guess hunger and fear beat him and we had left the cage propped open just in case this kinda thing might happen.)

And believe it or not, this very same thing happened the next summer when hubby "accidentally" (so he says - we had been having lots of sunny early mornings) left the cage door open.

So twice he was "let free" and twice he came back. I guess he loved me after all :)

As an extra side note lesson of the day, all my pictures of Beeper were on my computer. The computer died (and so has Beeper) and I didn't have an external hard drive at the time. Hence, I have no pictures of this wonderful little bird.

Blogging and Traveling

How often is too much?

Yesterday I thought of about 20 things I could blog about as I deep cleaned the spare bedroom in anticipation/possibility of having guests in the couple days.

And I kept myself from blogging again because I had already written my blog for the day. But, it is MY blog. Can't I write more than once a day?? Or is that bad blogetiquette? And if it is, does anyone else really care?

My mind travels a lot when I do menial things, like folding the laundry, dusting, driving, etc. Oh, did I just say driving? Well, you have all done it I'm sure. You get somewhere and wonder how on earth you got there. You don't remember the drive. You were on "autopilot," a line from the movie CLICK, which I believe to be the non-religious, all season version of A Christmas Carol.

See how my mind travels? I went from dusting to movies in 2 seconds flat.

Yesterday as I was typing my blog, I was sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the window. As I started typing again, something caught my eye. It was a giant bird! And he was flailing as he landed, which is why it caught my eye. First, I made sure it wasn't an eagle (which wouldn't be that impossible as we are fairly close to the Missouri River and have seen them flying around, along with seagulls and other water birds.

But, it was just a Red Tailed Hawk. I got a few pics from the window but they didn't turn out very well because he was still pretty far away. The best one is below.