Scruffy The Legend

Its mulberry season in my backyard.  It started rather abruptly a few days ago.  The sound of birds squabbling over something was the first sign.  Our mulberry tree is quite large and affords nice shade during much of the year.  It was planted, I guess, by some previous owner of my house.  Why – I’ll never know.  It does have a nice tree fort in it, and it seems like the perfect tree for that purpose.  I hate mulberry season.  It means that for the next month or two, the tree and the whole backyard will be full of birds – sometimes as many as several hundred at one time.  If you think red-breasted Robins are a rare and wonderful spring sight, you haven’t been to my house.  Yesterday, I think I counted about 15 of them at once – all squabbling over the not-even-ripe- yet mulberries.  And you thought Robins were quiet, peaceful birds.  Believe it or not, later in the season, when the berries are really over-ripe, drunken birds will appear.  They have engorged themselves with fermenting berries.  They usually can run quite well, but can not get off the ground.  They don’t start to run unltil you are about one foot away from them.  I have to keep the garage door shut or at most half open to keep them from getting in.  Once a bird is in the garage, even the smartest and most sober among them can not escape.  When one is in the garage, I take both cars out, open both doors and try to scare the bird out.  The bird only knows to go higher into the rafters and can not figure out that he can easily escape through the huge opening left by the open doors.  I end up chasing the bird back and forth with a raised fishing pole.  The idea is to keep the bird constantly airborne.  Only after about an hour of chasing it from one side of the roof to the other, do I notice that the bird is tiring and can not maintain his previous altitude.  After another half hour or so, the bird can not maintian an altitude above the rafters and flies out, only to land a few feet away on the driveway, totally unable to fly or move.  After another half hour or so, it flies away.

Ruby is smart enough to know that rabbits and squirrels, but not birds, are potential prey.  Charlie thinks birds can be caught and so he will chase them.  Charlie is very fast, and almost caught a rabbit yesterday that was dumb enough to come inside the fenced dog yard (which is half under the mulberry tree).  He will have no trouble catching drunken birds on the ground.  Even Ruby may get interested in this.  If you have read my book, you already know about the fun involved both with the mulberry tree and with dogs catching small animals at my house.

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