Empty Nest

Two weeks ago, I came home from a week-long work trip to an (almost) 31 year old man greeting me at the door, giddily saying “I want to show you something” and he asked me to come into the spare bedroom.
 

(Get your mind out of the gutter…)
 

He quickly took the screen out of the window and whispered “look in the bush – there are baby birds!”  And sure enough, there were 4 tiny, kind of ugly (if I’m being honest) baby robins and they (and my husband) were just.so.cute.
 

Aren’t they adorable?

 

We’ve checked in on our babies every day, often scaring away mom in the process.  Why is that anyway?  Isn’t she supposed to stay and protect her babies?  She’d take off faster than – insert inappropriate joke here – and squawk at us from the tree 3 miles away… or 300 feet.  Whatever.  But still… did she not care about her babies?  What is is, Casey A.?  Oooh… too soon?  Maybe.

 

Fast forward to yesterday.  It’s 4th of July, and John and I spent an awesome day at the lake, followed by a walk on the beach and lobsters at a local dock… absolute perfection.

 

Perfect day with my perfect husband.

 

As soon as we got home, we let the beasts out – John had Jersey on a leash and Capone and Brody were eating grass while I was watering my tomatoes (I have to get those veggies growing) and all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed John walking behind the bushes to check on our bird babies and before I could scream “what the f are you doing” (which I did still get past my lips), our 4 baby birds leaped out of their perfect little nest and scattered across the backyard.  Brody noticed.  Later, John said he thinks Brody just wanted to sniff that adorable little birdie… I think he saw him as an appetizer to dinner (for the record, no baby birds were harmed). Either way, I scrambled all of the dogs inside as soon as I could before I fuh-reaked out that John had just scared the babies and now mama was getting ready to peck our eyes out and she had commandeered her friends too… seriously, there were like 3 new robins in our yard in a matter of seconds.

 

They were bigger but not THAT much bigger.

 

Soon, mama was swooping around the yard, probably giving little birdie pep talks to all of her babies while I stood on the back porch, tears streaming down my cheeks, so distraught that my husband had just totally disrupted this adorable little family living in my shrubbery.  John kept insisting that they’d be fine and that he saw one fly up to the neighbors shed.  All I could think about was this little mommy bird with her 4 perfect children that she had worked so hard to raise, feed and teach and that they couldn’t have possibly been ready to leave the nest yet.  They were just learning to fly and the equivalent of the Big Bad Wolf just came and FORCED them out of their nest!  I was beside myself.
 

Then, 20 minutes later, John walked into our bedroom (where I was still sulking thinking about the poor mama bird) and nonchalantly said, “by the way, the mom just flew over to me and thanked me for getting the babies out of the nest… she said she’s been trying to do it for over a week but they just wouldn’t leave.”
 

And I just about lost it.  I was laughing SO hard.  Clearly our parenting style might be JUST a little different.
 

I haven’t seen the birds today.  I’m going to look on the bright side and say, they just needed that little push to leave home.
 

And they’re going to be just fine.
 

I’ve often said that the most important thing you can give your children is wings. Because, you’re not gonna always be able to bring food to the nest. You’re… sometimes… they’re gonna have to be able to fly by themselves.  ~Elizabeth Edwards