Mike is a friend and colleague. Out of deference to his completely humorless employer, I won't disclose his last name last he be found out as someone who takes a moment to think and reflect from time to time.
Mike sent me this the other day. It falls into the category of "there's more to life than the knucklehead you just got off the phone with who clearly doesn't get the concept of service."
Mockingbird
Let me share a quality of life moment at work.
My home office window has as suburban a view as you can get. Middle class, mostly white collar, subdivision in Garland, with street after street of manicured lawns. By 9 am most people have left for work or school and it is an almost serene place.
Whenever I fold my hands behind my head and lean back into my chair to attain that between-thought restive tilt, I am soon caught up in the very active, very social, sometime noisy and even hectic world of birds. There must be all sorts of dynamics going on out there among these creatures. Certainly there's an economy. After all there are nests to build and maintain. Someone is always busy flying to and fro with a twig or leaf in beak. There is a sort of police system headed up by mockingbirds who seem to live and let live in that they tolerate neighboring birds but they fear no one, and seem to be able to trade in their happy go luckiness for ferocity when the occasion calls for it.
You could for instance alight on a branch well below their nest but Lord help you if you came too close to that nest. And I don't care how big you are outside of being a falcon, a mockingbird will attack you if it feels provoked.
The other day I was startled by a pair of birds who flew close to me at break neck speed. It was a huge urban grackle being escorted out of the neighborhood by a mockingbird less than half its size.
Mockingbirds are known to swoop down on joggers when there are young ones in the nest. But they don't just swoop. A mockingbird will chastise you as well. They are a common bird in Texas in terms of their numbers and your likelihood to see one. There are as many mockingbirds outside my window as wrens. But they are distinctly uncommon in appearance with their neat dressed grays and those magnificent epaulets on their wings. These distinct, distinguished markings are most noticeable when they first take off from a still position: it’s almost as if they flash for a moment. Mockingbirds are like the master sergeants of the bird world. The sort of NCO that can carry itself as nobly as the high ranking cardinal or haughty blue jay.
Many people have stories about a particular mockingbird and its native talent for reproducing sounds. I read a newspaper article about a gentleman who assures us that his mockingbird returns notes from Mozart played on a patio Victrola.
Here is my story.
For some strange reason the original builders of my house mounted a smoke detector on the ceiling of my entryway which is a dramatic but unpractical 18 feet high. I say impractical because the battery has died and I have no easy way to replace it. So it chirps.
It chirps a single high pitched chip every five minutes to remind me to replace the battery. It has been chirping for so long this time that I no longer really notice it.
When overheard across the phone a caller will ask if I own a bird. “Kind of,” I reply.
Anyway, on occasion, when I leave the front door open, there is a mockingbird that likes to sit in the yellow crepe myrtle out front and converse with my smoke detector. The conversations never last long. I have a border collie that dutifully gets up from her pallet for the 30 seconds it takes her to shoo the bird and return to her dog dreaming.
It reminds me to return to work as well.
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Kevin Hoffberg
Last modified:
07/24/05