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My Wife’s Latest Fear.
What she calls “little peckers.”
“The early bird gets the worm. The early worm…gets eaten.” Norman Ralph Augustine
Spring has sprung and “love is in the air,” as my wife likes to say. To watch Winona skip gayly across the lawn, sniffing blossoms, it’s hard to imagine she could be in any imminent danger.
Then again, this is my wife, a woman who’s actually brawled with a squirrel. So I’m not surprised to see her running back and forth across the lawn now, swatting away at something, then coming through the side door screaming “Little peckers!”
Seeing as we live in the country, it’s not like we’re surrounded by mashers or “pedal-philes,” as my wife calls them. I have to ask her — with all sincerity — “What have you done this time, Winona?”
“Then stay away from her nest. How would you like it if you gave birth, and some big hairy face was staring at you?”
“I — I just wanted to see how many babies were in the nest,” she says. “The mommy attacked me.”
“What sort of bird was it?”
“A stupid blue jay. She pecked me right in the ear.”
“Then stay away from her nest. How would you like it if you gave birth, and some…