Flight Training

My clothesline has always frustrated me.  It was put up in the wrong place.  It was installed so incorrectly that the steel poles have actually bent.  It lacks the hardware that it should have (no turnbuckles) and that means that the wires are always too slack.  Thus I never use the clothesline, and I spend money foolishly running the dryer instead.  I have always dearly wanted a clothesline (is there anything better than sleeping on fresh line-dried sheets?!) but the clothesline I've got is just Not It.  Major disappointment.

Since I moved my office round a few months ago, the view outside my desk window includes that ruddy clothesline.  I try not to grind my teeth but sometimes the mere sight of it irks me. 

What I've noticed lately, though, is something much more amusing:  the clothesline serves an unexpectedly different purpose for birds.  Last week, it was the blue jays using the clothesline.  Today, it is the cardinals.  Parent birds are bringing their newly fledged babies to the Clothesline Flight School for Specialized Aviation Training. 

While mama bird stands by on the pole, baby bird tries to hover and touch down over and over again.  He goes from the wires to the ground, the ground to the wires, trying to make his feathers work just so.  He's wobbly on his wings as he tries to learn the mysteries of the air.  Training recess finds the birds sitting on the too-loose wires, swaying too and fro, enjoying the first sunny day in more than a week.  Then they open their beaks and sing for the pure joy of it.  Red birds.  Beautiful.

Maybe it's not such a bad clothesline after all.
Life is good.