Here Little Birdies....Tweet Tweet!

My 15 month old son started doing something so cute about 2 weeks ago.  We have a bay window in the kitchen and a few bird feeders in the yard close to the window.  He likes to pull out a chair from the kitchen table and position himself right near the window in the morning to watch the "birdies", as we call them.  Everything has a cutesy name you know.

So when I saw my adorable son sitting every morning in his chair to watch one or two little birdies, I figured that I must do something to make his bird watching experience an event to remember.  It started with a couple of innocent trips to the lawn and garden department at my local Wal-Mart superstore.  First, I purchased a suet basket and a suet cake along with a treat bell (which is nothing more than birdseed formed into the shape of a bell).  Those things set me back around $7...no biggie.  I put them on the pole which holds the bird feeders and waited.  No birds, no squirrels, no wildlife of any kind.

A second trip to Wal-Mart followed.  This time I bought a $20 mega bird feeder that you can put either thistle in or regular bird seed.  I bought a bag of not-so-cheap bird seed and figured this would do the trick for sure.  The bag of bird seed cost about $8.00.  Now I'm out $35 total and it's starting to get serious.  Still no birds and I'm starting to get mad.  Looking back, I should have tilled up the entire yard and planted grass seed.  My mistake.

A third trip to Wal-Mart followed.  "I need to get some thistle", I thought.  The finches will surely come if I put out some thistle.  I figured I'd outsmart the laws of murphy and just buy a sock of thistle which was only $5.00.  Ha!  I wasn't going to be suckered this time.  So I hang this hideous looking sock outside that is full of thistle.  It looks like I have a dirty sock hanging from the pole now...great.  The neighbors must be thinking we've gone mad or we're hanging our laundry out to dry now.

Day after day, my son sat in his birdie watchin' chair, and hardly any birds came.  What's wrong with these stupid birds!?  Don't they know there's a virtual smorgasbord of bird seed in our back yard and it's all FREE??  Are they too good for my bird seed?!  The war is on now.

Next thing I know, I'm visiting this Wild Birds Unlimited store in a strip mall.  My blood is boiling.  There's going to be birds in our backyard if I have to rent Big Bird himself.  Perhaps the birds do not like the feeders that we have or the seed.  So, I plop down another $30.00 for a recycled bird feeder that will supposedly last a lifetime.  They had their own "gourmet" blends of wild bird seed there.  I spent another $7.00 on a gallon jug of their birdie crack.  The damn "bird seed blend" has whole almonds, peanuts, fruit and sunflower seeds in it!  Hell, I might want to munch on some of this stuff!

Seventy-seven dollars later, we finally have birds.  The only problem is we have these huge big black ugly birds that scare off all of the little, pretty birds now.  LOL  I guess this makes me a bird racist or something.  At the very least I've created the birdie crack house in our neighborhood.  What we won't do for our kids.