So Saturday I was on the deck and there was a lot of fuss from the blue jays in the tree that overhangs it. After a while, I heard a "thunk," and there was a fluffy little baby blue jay just three feet from me. He looked around at me and then started hopping in the opposite direction. His parents were still in the tree above me, making soft little "whip, whip" noises to direct him and encourage him.
He hopped and fluttered his way across the lawn to the wire cattle fence on the side, which is backed up by a wooden picket fence that separates my yard from the neighbors. The gap is filled with dead leaves and bamboo poles. He hopped and popped all the way to the middle rung of the picket fence, then rested for a while.
Later, he hopped (or fell) from the rung and went instead to a dead tree limb sticking up from the brush pile. It was not high enough to be safe, but that was where he decided he was too exhausted to go any farther and started to fall asleep, although his parents tried to warn him. I went over to try and wake him and scold him, too, but he just stared at me, his eyelids heavy, and nodded off again. Completely fearless in the way that only the very innocent are.
While I was trying to coax him back awake, suddenly I heard his parents screaming a few feet away. Spicy had come out to sun herself under the cattle panels. She didn't see the baby, and wasn't in a hunting mood--it was HOT. But the parents were in a panic. I went and brought Spicy inside to spare them the stress. The baby still hadn't moved when I came back--he was just too tired.
It hit me then that the parents had never screamed at me, although I'd actually run inside to get witnesses and a phone, and followed from a few feet away, cooing and squealing at him while videotaping his journey across the lawn, and stood only a foot from him from behind the wire fencing where he was now, crooning baby talk at him and calling everyone to see.
No one else bothered him (I was worried about the neighbor's dog and cat). That afternoon, near sunset, the little one woke up and started off again, and with the help of the brush pile and nearby tree limbs, eventually hopped and popped and fluttered his way to the top of the neighbor's shed right next to the dividing fence. My daughter and I cheered him on, and his parents did, too. We were so proud!
But we wondered: where were his brothers and sisters? Well, Sunday I was out on the deck again, and heard the blue jays making the same kind of fuss--this time on the opposite side of the deck, in a tree with azaleas beneath it. I looked, but didn't venture over. I couldn't see any babies. But when Spicy came out to the deck, they started screaming and I knew they must have one over there somewhere.
One of the parents came and perched on a tree limb a few feet above and in front of me and proceeded to tell me off directly. The message was clear: "Get. Your cat. Out of of here. NOW!" But I didn't. Spicy didn't seem to be in the mood to go after anything, and I told myself I'd make sure she didn't go over there.
Fast forward a few minutes to a terrible cacophony of shrieking and dive-bombing blue jays, and Spicy shot away from the azaleas and around the side of the house to the front. The blue jays gave chase. While they were at it, I finally went over to the azaleas and there they were: two little balls of fluff in the branches of the azaleas.
Spicy is now thoroughly intimidated by blue jays (at almost four years old, this is her first summer with free reign of the yard, so she's had to learn some lessons the hard way) and they've been lording it over her all yesterday and today, terrorizing her by swooping low and shrieking at her whenever she doesn't expect it. She hunches her shoulders and quickly slinks or runs for cover. Just now she came to me for protection, lol (I'm out on the deck right now).
I'm just glad the blue jay babies will be safe from my mighty mouse-catcher and groundhog-chaser so long as those parents have anything to say about it--and they have PLENTY to say.
