Larry

I recently wrote about Larry, a little bird that came to my deck in the snowy, windy, cold weather we had a while back. He would stand on the ledge on my railing and look into my condo through the sliding glass door. I started putting out food for him which he loved. I even flattened a stewed tomatoes can on one side and put a rock in the bottom of it. That way I could put seeds in it and it wouldn’t blow off the ledge. I put out the lid to my garlic salt for a water container for him as I had nothing else. He comes early in the morning and sometimes is there until it gets dark. I love having him there and feel like he’s sort of keeping me company. I’m getting quite attached to him which is not a good sign. I talked to a lady at the Audubon Society the other day who told me it’s not good to get too friendly with him. I can’t remember what the reason was. I just said “Yeah, you’re right – uh huh – uh huh.” And then it was time for me to feed him again.

I went to a pet store today and showed the owner Larry’s picture. She said he’s a sparrow. I don’t know much about sparrows, but I do remember something that happened before I got married. My mom was sitting on the lawn in front of our house and sewing little seed pearls onto my wedding dress. They had come off due to the fact that the dress had been worn by 3 generations before me! She was facing our garage where there was a nest of little swallows that my mom loved. But there were sparrows that kept coming there, trying to scare the little swallows away. So there was my mom, with my dad’s revolver in her hand and shooting at the sparrows when they appeared! I wish I had a picture of that.

Larry spends his days on the ledge and also on my deck. He likes to peck at the seeds I put in a planter on the deck, and he likes hopping around the bowling ball I have in a planter. I put seeds in the soil around the planter and Larry likes that. Sometimes he sits on top of the bowling ball. He hops all over the deck, so I know when spring comes and I want to plant flowers, there will be bird poop all over everything. Today while I was on my treadmill in my bedroom, I looked out the window and there was Larry, on the ledge. He looked like he was watching me.

I’m sure he will leave just as all Larrys do. But I’m enjoying it while I can. Larry is in the above picture on the right side of the ledge.