The Bird Feeder

Sometimes, not often enough, I stop my morning routine to watch the feeding drama breathe feathered flurries in and out, on, and under, my side-yard bird feeder Outside my kitchen windows over this morning's sudsy sink, looking across a twinkling white field of early March snow, simply breathing us all in, boundary framed inside/outside by my southern neighbor's brown-stained fence. I find myself aggressively prejudiced against the voracious grey squirrel invaders. NonElite sparrows share my disappointment with squirrelish selfish ways. Usually the squirrels scavenge the ground and snow below my feeder, my free-will offering intended to seduce cardinals and woodpeckers and finches and, yes, the humble brown sparrows, whose great number of heads, present today and missing tomorrow, healthy and harmed, is indeed an epic mystery offered in return for my pre-invested feeder. But, one squirrel, who usually shows up with a friend, maybe a girlfriend, I don't really know the texture of their ongoing harvesting journey, reaping through family life, romance, play, foraging for nutritional climax But, regardless, This one squirrel likes to challenge my daily vegetable-oiled round brown metal pole that holds a clear plastic feeder enclosed by a squirrel-deterring wire defense, which acts more like a perch for equi-poised access than an effective wall against unwelcome over-consuming rodents. I am equally at war with crows, not because I don't like them as a species, which, unfortunately, may be my issue about greedy squirrels, but because crows travel in aggressive gangs. And, they don't live here, in my felt ownership sphere, They hang around this side of the river but they don't live in my neighborhood because they aren't suitable for any one properly humane place. They need a grander sense of cooperative space. Rowdy crows do, occasionally, flock and swarm in to clean out my one inadequate consumer-feeder and produce poop on everything in sight but I do not tolerate these assaults in silent Win/Lose acquiescence. I run out to shout against them. They listen and rise to move away but watch and wait to see and hear if I will continue this lively scarecrow battle. Which seems to mutually please us to repeat twice, or even thrice. I repeat these roaring toothless threats, Until we win together, drawing more appropriately apart. Then, too, I notice some of the blue-jays are more tolerant of diversity while others poke at smaller birds. This bothers me. If some can get along, why not Win/Win all? Still, I seldom intervene. We have only two blue-jay couples, so I put out plenty for all If we are patient enough to work and play and breathe around each other. The mourning doves always salvage off the ground, winter through summer They look fat and dark suit preacherly as they waddle and forage what their more flamboyantly aviary cousins leave for them underneath my humble feeder. So little consumer invested for so much dramatically productive grace, mutually feeding place. Yet, I still wonder why I am so incensed about the scandalous squirrel who defies my obviously over-powering will to not feed him here, or anywhere in my garden or on my struggling fruit and nut trees. I suppose rodents remind me too much of my me-feeder consumptive shamelessness.