\ east west box

I had nearly flown from the nest when my sister ran off, sending my parents into africanized bee activity, making me bow my head low whenever I crept downstairs to add more tap water to the ever fading bottles of amaretto and hennessy. Her departure made me feel like the lame boy from the pied piper days, the one i felt sorriest for, left to be the only child in a town full of bereaved cheapskates, adored even more for his incapable escape. I bet he eventually ran for mayor of hamelin, the only member of the youth ticket.

Never shortchange a tribute is the lesson i learned, that and not to focus too many of your energies on the last kid standing. The new no child left behind logo appears like three bloodied finger scratches scraped into the floor, as if dragged from his feet by some puritanical headmaster. Ain't you heard the music? Town's infested with rats (illiteracy? teen pregnancy?). Time to get on to the cave (abstinence education? creationism?). Bring all your books and assorted tinders. Cold in there, lord.

I am duly adored for all of 2 weeks before the regret gives way, as regret is wont to do, to more constructive emotions, like annoyance and separate beds. It was the best year of my life. The principal handed me my diploma and i felt the wing buds dry out in the sun, used my gift money for gasoline and flew from the last of the homes we appropriated from VA foreclosures and empty nests, the smell of christmas cedar still burnt into the carpet.

Before they boxed up my things, though, the new tenants arrived, reminding me of what it was like when we were the house wrens, assuming the living spaces of those evicted, dissassembling their constructive efforts. Piece by piece. The tinier species, bushtits, I think, would watch us much like a family of immigrants witnessing a conflagration in the middle of the night, too preoccupied with pets and photo albums and legal papers to allow themselves a moment to ask in some foreign language where they will go now. They watch us then as we pick up their old materials and with our beaks and feathers fashion together a home that looked very much like the one they just lost, reconstructed from the very same pieces.

We have liberated them, we say, and while they linger we wonder what's taking them so long to congratulate us for our efforts. We write to the congregation back home, being sure to point out how fortunate we are to be doing the good work, even in the face of such ingratitude.

House wrens are hawkish little birds.