The red-tailed hawk bappies are thriving and huge at MIT, but the robins in my plum tree are not. I have not seen the parents in days. I did find one half of a robin's egg in the yard, but I can't tell if it hatched normally or was cracked by a crow or a foul evil cat or by a fall. Without the parents, even if a chick did hatch, it's dead now. Hooray. So I'm watching the hawks again.
I set up the soaker hoses in the two box beds and planted more spinach and carrots in some bare areas. Blake got to eat some of the first baby spinach. I weed-whacked the jungle under the cherry tree and mowed the grassesque again and wondered whether Round-Up will be able to kill everything for hopefully next spring's grass replacement. By the time I planted cilantro in a small container, Blake had left off chattering and began to yell--because he can't eat cilantro so finds it pointless and boring, I decided. But before that, as I knelt in the south garden weeding, Blake and I were having our usual conversation: "You're a good boy buddy" with my usual response, "Yes you are a good boy buddy. Blake is a pretty bird." (I always reinforce "Blake is a pretty bird," because he has pretty much stopped saying it, though he mumbles or whistles it sometimes.)
Eventually from his side of the fence I heard my neighbor's voice: "Who are you talking to over there?"
"My bird. Can't you hear him chattering on the patio?"
"I hear a lot of birds." He put his head over the top of the fence.
"Yes, but Blake is the only one trying to speak English." I brought the cage over, held it up, and encouraged Blake to call Neighbor a good boy, buddy. This he did not do, but he did make his sweet little greeting chuck. I interpreted. Neighbor chucked back to Blake. Blake bowed.
I would be extremely glad to know that Neighbor is usually that unaware of Blake. I'm afraid that must be impossible, though, because Blake can shriek plaster from the ceiling in the interminable time I cruelly allow to elapse between his spotting me, from his post by the window, to when I get my bike put away and my bike shoes off at the back of the house and my body arriving at his door at the front of the house.
Recently I borrowed another neighbor's basset hound, not because particularly because he's a basset hound but because he is old and gentle and slow. I brought him into the house on his little pulley leash, and it's a damn good thing Blake can flutter and the hound is as slow as he is, because I didn't know how to work the leash. The dog pulled, and the leash released, and Blake fled as well as he could, while I bodily blocked the hound and got a slight friction burn on my palms from grabbing the cord instead of the handle. The dog was a lot more interested in Blake than Blake was in the dog, and whether that interest was gustatory or not, it was still expressed far too rambunctiously for Blake's safety.
So that didn't go well.
I'm damn glad I didn't try that little experiment with this next-door neighbor's dog--he's a Boxer-Lab cross and strong as a mule. And sweet as a burro, if you're big enough to withstand his affection.