Update and Personal Note — 2010-5

Update & Personal Note — 2010-5

A Change of Porches

by Fred Pruitt

This should be my last update from Pensacola. We have packed and packed and still have today and tomorrow to go for packing, before we get our blessed UHaul truck and load it on Saturday. The plan is to load Saturday, drive to Rome (400 miles), and unload Sunday. As it says on the UHaul Truck, “Adventure in Moving.” Amen!

We would appreciate your prayers of faith for us. We’re GLAD to be doing this. But we will be VERY GLAD when it is all done, and we are sitting on our new front porch on Maple Road, in Lindale (part of “greater” Rome).

We sure have enjoyed our front porch here in Pensacola. This is such an eclectic community and neighborhood. We get lots of foot traffic going past our house, usually people on walks, walking babies, some joggers, many boats (since there is a boat ramp two blocks from here), and we even have on at least three occasions have seen people walking by with parrots on their shoulders, heads, or arms. We’ve seen people walking with parrots, one riding a bicycle with a parrot on his shoulder, and one time a truck pulling a boat with a lady in the boat with a parrot on her shoulder. It’s doubtful we’ll see much of that in Lindale.

Another thing we have enjoyed on our front porch have been the local birds and animals. Early in the spring, we caught sight of a pair of woodpeckers, pecking furiously on a dead trunk high in the top of a living oak tree across the street from us. We watched them for weeks pecking and pecking, until we realized they were making a house. Finally when the house was finished the little woodpecker family moved in and had their babies. Then we watched them for weeks going back and forth getting food for the little ones.

A family of mockingbirds made a nest in the large bush at the end of the driveway on the left. It was comical to see different animals and birds approach their bush, because the mockingbirds would come out fiercely to drive off anything coming into their space.

One of the funniest things we’ve ever seen happened right in front of us a couple of months ago. The mockingbirds’ bush is on the left side of our driveway at the road, and a power pole just to the side of it. From the power pole electrical and other lines go across the end of our front yard to another power pole on the right side, with some more large bushes next to that pole. There had been a running quarrel with the mockingbirds and a squirrel that always came from the bushes on the right. He would scamper across the powerlines headed toward the mockingbird bush and always get chased away. But the squirrel never gave up. For some reason it really wanted to go to that bush.

Then one day the squirrel was headed as usual toward dangerous mockingbird territory, and just as he got to the wire pole, up flew the mockingbird at full speed out of the center of the bush. In a fraction of a second the squirrel reversed, running with all its might toward the safety of the other side. This all took less than 2 or 3 seconds, but it was as if it played out in slow motion in front of us. What the mockingbird did seemed to defy physics. As the squirrel turned and ran, the mockingbird, who flies much faster than the squirrel can run, caught up instantly with the fleeing squirrel, and then adjusted his flight speed to match the squirrel’s, and then followed the squirrel across the wire at exactly the same speed, the whole time pecking that poor squirrel’s butt, right dead center. It was like a cartoon, only much much funnier, to see that squirrel no doubt saying to himself, “oh crap, look what I’ve done now,” while the mockingbird is pecking with full force where it hurts the most. Poor squirrel.

However, the squirrel it seems has finally achieved its goal. Finally the mockingbirds moved out a few weeks ago, and once they were gone, the squirrel starting bringing brush and leaves, etc., up into the bush constantly, until we could finally see that it had made a nest in the bush. Now the bush is his house!

There were other things I could tell about our porch, but I’ll stop there.

Thanks to everyone who has been with us and for us, and we are with all of you in heart and spirit as well.

Next stop  – ROME GA! (Well, that will actually be sometime Saturday — we are here in Pensacola until then.)

fred

http://thesingleeye.wordpress.com

PS — Trip plans for the fall we’ll announce later as they are formed.

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