On Neighbors
Nestled in the U-shaped nook formed by our front porch, walkway, and garage, lives an arborvitae. It was present when we moved in, and never should have been planted there, as it has far outgrown the space. There are a number of reasons why we haven’t removed it yet—lack of proper tools, not wanting to kill an otherwise fine plant, sheer laziness—but the most sentimental of these is that we’d be evicting a pair of doves that return to nest in the same exact branch multiple times a year.
I don’t know why they keep coming back here, because this shrub is right next to our front door. We have to be within a foot of this nest just to leave the house, and we’re walking by it multiple times a day. It feels like this by itself should be a deterrent to any animal trying to raise a family, and that’s assuming we’re simply passing by and not paying attention to it. But because we’re dumb bird-loving humans, we’re often compelled to poke our faces in and check on them. I know this freaks them out because they just sit there and stare back at us, not moving a muscle out of stone-cold terror, probably hoping beyond hope that we can’t actually see them if they stay perfectly still.
So if it was me, I feel like I wouldn’t keep coming back to this place where the giant scary humans ogle my cute, helpless offspring, but they do. Hell, the last batch of fledgelings just left a week or so ago and the parents are already back nesting. Why do they choose to do this to themselves?
Though… I guess now that I’m writing about it, it occurs to me there was that one time a few years ago where the nest fell out. I recovered it, stuck it in a deli container, wired it back into the arborvitae around the same spot, and put the chick back in safely. Maybe word got around that I’m not actually all that bad.
I doubt it, but you never know.
