Home is where your heart lives

I think we have finally convinced the birds to go somewhere else to build a nest. For several weeks we have watched a pair of birds fly straight at the bathroom window. We were convinced that they were suicidal and would change their minds at the last minute.

I looked several times but couldn’t see where they were intending to go. Then yesterday I saw one of the birds sitting on the top of the window frame. Behind it was a piece of loose siding with bits and pieces of dried grass and other nesting materials sticking out.

I told my hubby that the mystery was solved. We patched the opening and haven’t seen the birds since. It is not like they don’t have any other place to build a home. They are more than welcome to build their home in either of the spruce trees, the weeping cherry, several maples or any of the assorted other trees and shrubs around our yard.

I am not sure what kind of birds they are. They are black, smaller than a robin but bigger than a sparrow and determined to live wherever they choose.

They are not the only wildlife that has wanted to move in with us. For several years a family of squirrels lived in the soffit of the front porch. They finally made such a mess that we removed the soffit. They must have found other lodging as there are plenty of them and their offspring chasing each other around the yard.

There are assorted cats that use our yard as prime hunting ground. They are more than welcome to all the mice and other small fuzzy wildlife that they can catch.

Sometimes I wonder if the birds and animals that call our place home do so because it is convenient or because it is the only home they have ever known.

I have read that most people live within 100 miles of where they were born. Do you? I don’t but not by much.

What is home, anyway? Is it where you live? Is it where you grew up? Is it where you can kick off your shoes and just be yourself? Is it where your pets are? Is it what the poet Robert Frost said, home is “something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

For many, if not most, people home is a refuge. For others, home is a dangerous place. For a couple of birds, home was going to be behind a piece of loose siding and over a window. Then they decided to look elsewhere for a better place to live when the homeowner made their chosen location uninhabitable.

How do we choose where to call home? We were lured here by a job offer that we didn’t feel we could refuse. I think that many people follow a job and before they know it, they discover they are home.

It may not have been their first choice but it was the right choice. Soon enough they are retired and chasing wildlife away from a bathroom window.