Deborah,
Thanks for the colorful "garage menagerie" stories. Gardening attracts this
small wildlife to our yards - property with only ornamental shrubbery, for
instance, doesn't support such "diversity"!
Some related "garage menagerie" thoughts from my journal...
The new garage captured hummingbirds. Drawn by the red of a gas can or a
power trimmer they would hover inside the yawning double opening. I imagined
them frightened by a noise outside and rushing in and up where they would be
trapped by the vacuous space above the door. With no outside light visible
they would rush along the ceiling, no sunlight in sight, their panic a
vicious cycle like hyperventilation. Finally, exhausted, they would perch on
a dip in the garage door opener's wiring, five inches from the ceiling and
almost twelve feet from the ground.
No sooner was I in the door from work but my daughter, age 6, would come
running to tell me another hummingbird was caught in the garage. Each time I
had driven my car right beneath it, but it was so exhausted it had not
stirred. Each time, climbing carefully onto the roof of the car, I plucked
the tiny captive from the wire. With the lid off the hummingbird feeder and
holding a carrot peeler with a drop poised in its curved tip, I teased the
tiny creatures' mouths open so I could drop sugar water into the tiny
exhausted body. Reviving almost instantly they each flew away. Some, at
night, flew towards the full moon until I lost sight of them, others flew to
a nearby dead limb on a cedar tree. We worked hard to keep the garage door
closed during the daylight hours, and I moved red objects farther into the
dark interior, but I still had to revive and release five of the tiny
creatures before the summer was over and they all migrated south.
Each was a marvel in miniature, the tiniest hot blooded living thing I had
ever held. Each was noticeably different from the last. While I could never
tell them apart at the hummingbird feeder, except for gender, gently held in
my fingers I could easily notice differences in size, build, feather pattern,
curve of beak, and color. When I plucked the first one I had feared I would
crush its bones. We had seen a hummingbird skeleton on display at a local
museum just weeks before and I had commented that it looked made of cobwebs.
In my grasp, however, I found a powerfully muscled ounce of flesh, its heart
beating so fast it was more like a vibration than a pulse. I could feel the
fantastic strength used to hover effortlessly in the red sage and cardinal
flowers of our gardens.
