Who’s the Real Enemy?

Three or four weeks ago, my wife and I discovered a new nest in the pyracantha bush that surrounds our front porch on two sides. As we kept watch, we noticed a mockingbird flying out from the bush periodically. I could get close enough to see four eggs and looked forward to taking pictures of the babies when the time came, just as I’d done with some baby robins a month or two earlier.

At first she steered clear of us completely, but–the closer hatching time came–the more she hung around, looking and acting like the protective mother she was. We could understand that. But we knew we weren’t going to hurt her eggs or her babies once they hatched.

We knew it, but she didn’t. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked up at an adult mockingbird that’s spreading her tail feathers and making the most ferocious of noises, but it’s enough to make a skittish person like me jump back.

Once the babies were born, I couldn’t even touch the branch that would have allowed us to look into the nest. Many is the conversation I had with that mama, some more pleasant than others. I even made imitation bird noises in the hopes I could convey my good intentions.

She backed off a couple of branches the first time I did that, but got even louder the second time.

She finally decided to dive bomb me when I wasn’t looking–and I wasn’t even that close to the nest. Fortunately, she didn’t peck me, but she did brush her wing against mine. Uh, against my arm, that is. I knew then I was probably not going to get those pictures, even though I could see the babies through open parts of the bush.

Then I went outside yesterday morning. No babies in sight. And a dead bird lay at the bottom of the pyracantha bush. One of the babies.

We don’t know what happened. A number of domestic cats are allowed to run loose in this neighborhood, and our elderly, next-door neighbor actually goes down to the end of the street to feed a bunch of feral cats that probably don’t need any help from her. Had one of these cats killed the dead bird? Had the mother somehow gotten the others to safety?

We’ll never know.

There’s a lesson to be learned here. Mama Mockingbird spent so much of her time and energy guarding against a perceived enemy that she may have ignored the real foe.

What about us? Do we do the same thing?

Do we fear Muslims more than we do the man in the White House? Do we fear ordinary criminals more than the power-hungry liberals in Washington who may or may not be real crooks?

That’s a question every adult must answer for himself.