Earth is considered the ‘school of hard knocks’ – being confined in a physical body on a planet that one can experience joy, anger, happiness, despair, love, fear, hate, accomplishment and failure.
But our planet is so much more than our self-encapsulated existence.
This summer, we had the experience of watching a pair of barn swallows raise two broods (which I am sure is not the correct term, but that is what it looked like to us!).
The swallows had built a mini-mud nest on our front patio.
Initially, the male (aka ‘Dad’) would harass us incessantly with the same repertoire of chirps. He wanted us gone and we weren’t going anywhere; but that didn’t matter, he would find us front or back yard, and give us ‘what-for’.
One day, I sat on the back screened in patio while talking to a friend on the phone, when his bullying got on my nerves. I asked my friend to hang on a minute, and called out “Do you mind? I am on the phone and cannot hear with all the noise you’re making. Tone it down, will you?”
He sat quietly until I finished up and went back inside. It wasn’t until later that I had realized what had happened.
One evening my husband and I sat on the back patio enjoying the scenery and chatting. ‘Dad’ showed up and began his monotonous drill, trying to get us to go away.
After about ten minutes I got annoyed with the non-stop repetitive sounds. I turned my head towards ‘Dad’ and told him that he could at least try some different sounds – since that one was getting old.
‘Dad’ went quiet, ruffled his feathers, and began experimenting with other sounds. My husband and I started laughing.
‘Dad’ and I had a talk and I explained that we needed to get along because we weren’t leaving. That seemed to be the turning point in our relationship with the swallows. We soon were able to go anywhere and not be harassed by the swallows.
Over the rest of the summer, we were able to watch two sets of three babies being raised.
When it came time for the first brood to learn to fly, other swallows came to visit and encouraged the newbies in the flight lessons. We sometimes had up to sixteen swallows on the front patio. (The visiting swallows would leave when we went out on the front patio.)
When the second brood began their flying lessons, they stayed away longer each day. We knew the time was coming that they would be leaving for the winter. One day they didn’t come ‘home’; no one returned to the front patio.
Last week, my husband and I were outside; I looked up towards the electric line and saw one side was filled with barn swallows…thirty-nine of them; they came en masse’ to say good-bye.
We live on an amazing planet, with some awesome cohabitants and we are missing so much by not seeing them.
Now, I am not saying to go up to a dangerous wild animal and ‘make nice’ – that would not be a good thing to do! But, we can learn so much from those we share this planet with if we took the time to pay attention.
This also includes other humans – we miss so much by our set routines; routine habits, routes and people.
As a teen, I would go to what we called back then ‘Old Folks Home’ and would just sit and listen to their stories of their past experiences. Though in my lifetime, I was not able to personally experience horse and buggies, ice trucks, coal trucks and the trials and tribulations of their day – I could learn much by hearing from those who had.
Critters and humans alike have much to share, if only we made the time to see and hear beyond our own little bubbles.
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