Yesterday afternoon, while standing on the back deck, Ray observed that the curse of the petunias is continuing to plague us.  A while back, we bought two hanging baskets of petunias to hang at either end of the deck.  One gets morning sun, one gets afternoon.  The curse is that we can not seem to have them both alive at the same time.  We’ve swapped them out, watered them on the same schedule, etc., but no matter what, at any given time we have one plant thriving and the other preparing to die.  They take turns.  We’re convinced they’re doing it just to fuck with us.

Currently, it’s purple petunia that’s looking like it’s about to go roots-up.  Ray announced, “I think we need to take it in and water it.”  This is the last resort–we take the plant in and put it in the kitchen sink for a couple of days until it revives.  I went to take down the plant, unhooking it, and, as I brought it down, my eyes suddenly registered two large, hairy, moving objects in the basket, one of which jumped out onto the deck.

“OHMYGOD!” I yelped, in a completely manly and not at all hysterical way.

It took a couple of seconds to register that the large, hairy, moving objects were not the blood sucking, fang toothed toads tarantulas that I had initially thought they were (what with my vast experience in dealing with such creatures on the back porch … never … ), but were, rather, two fuzzy baby birds who were nesting in the basket.

Unfortunately, right around this time, the second chick hopped out onto the deck and, naturally, they both started fluttering about (their wings being not developed enough to fly, but they can hop at a good clip–especially when someone my size has patio furniture to contend with) in completely opposite directions.

It’s times like these that I wished those stupid Ultimate Survivors Guides covered less zombie attacks and more “What to do when a baby bird falls out of its nest on your back porch.”  Remembering somewhere that I had heard or read that you’re not supposed to touch them yourself, I commanded Ray to go get my rubber gloves.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any more rubber gloves, so I wound up with a couple of paper towels.  These actually worked better — I chased one of the chicks around the deck for a bit and discovered that if I dropped the paper towels on top of it, it stopped moving.  Then I could feel about and pick it up and return it to the basket …

… from which it promptly jumped right out again and started hopping around under the furniture.

“Hang the basket up,” I told Ray as I started the process all over again, eventually scooping up the baby bird and returning it to its nest on high.  It tried to jump out again, but I stupidly stood there and snapped, “No.  Stay,” like I was talking to the dog.  Whether it had the common sense to realize that a drop of 6 feet is a little more than it wanted to tackle or it actually understood me, I don’t know, but it did actually stay put.

“Where’s the other one?” I asked, looking in the last direction I’d seen it go, which was into the yard.

“It went under the deck,” Ray said.  And that was that.  We looked repeatedly at the edges of the deck, but the chick had clearly run way underneath and there was no way we could see it, let alone get it to stay in the same place while we pulled up one of the boards (which is what we would have had to do to get to it).  We’ve been checking every time we go by the kitchen window, but the bird is, as far as we can tell, still under there.  Mocha has no idea — unlike last weekend when she found the one burrowed under the air conditioning, she’s been ignoring the deck entirely.  Either that or we’ve got into hidden option B, which involves the dog and a new raw food diet.  I’d rather not consider it.

This morning, I went out to look again.  “I think it’s gone,” I told Ray, not seeing anything while standing on one of the chairs to peer in the basket.  He got up to look.

“It’s not gone,” he said.  “It’s right here.”  He pulled the basket down and, this time, the bird stayed put.  Either it’s not afraid of us, or it’s still recovering from yesterday’s run around the deck.

And the petunia?  Still dead.  But at least there’s life in there somewhere …