The Stinky Birds

Dear K.C.

The birds you insist on asking about are the Aero Summerbeaches. They are not nice at all and they smell unbelievably rotten. You don't want to come into contact with those fellows. The best thing about them is that they like post-Curtains delicacies. The worst thing about them is that they will hang around during a Curtains event talking about who gets the first pickings. This is very uncomforting for the Curtainsee.

But I have to disagree about the furniture. I mean you have a finite amount of furniture in the house there, and you have no idea how much furniture is out here in the Great World. Not all of it is attached, you know. And even the trees fall down eventually. But there is a perfectly wonderful city of buckets and skids and rakes and tarps and even an old heater housing out behind the shed. Just when you get your tunnels all figured out, they come out and do gardening or lawn cutting and everything is all stirred up.

I wish it were like the old days. My grandfather had a great place with a southwest exposure here for a couple of years. A down spout came off the front of the house and no one bothered it for years. It lay just behind the Rhodies, so he told us, and still had the little right turn end attached. Too small for anyone as big as you to enter, and long enough that R.S. wouldn't slither very well through there. Grandmunk could scurry from either end out the other in no time flat. And it was water proof, he said, and right next to the bird feeding place. During the winter sunflower seeds were delivered to the front door. Green Thumb and Grandmunk had a good understanding about that.

But they weeded this spring and took the downspout back to the woods. Now it's lying so that rain comes in and no one wants to live there. And it's right under the hickory nut fallout. You could get deaf in a hurry in there.

If you could tell Green Thumb something for me: ask her if she could put a pipe back out under the Rhodies. I would like to come to an understanding about sunflower seeds too. When will she start delivering, I mean, to the birds...and would she consider putting a small handful at the end of the pipe? Then it could be like the old days. Winter is cold and bleak, and it's coming...

Hopefully, Chippy