Thursday, September 10, 2009

The Blue Jay and the Peanut


This morning when I was working on the computer, I noticed some commotion on our patio. When I looked over I saw this Scrub Jay, in a smart blue suit, white shirt front, black mask and black leggings, an outfit appropriate for today (09/09/09) where someone told me you should be dressed to the nines, with a peanut.

He was so excited about his good fortune in finding this entire unshelled peanut he was hopping all over our lawn furniture. Yet, every time he put the peanut down, you could see his worried little bird head moving side to side, assessing the angles where a marauder might sneak up and steal his prize peanut away from him.

The morning was cool and our patio is covered with an open trellis with a lazy, bright pink, Santa Barbara Bougainville climbing over it - really a perfect place for a Scrub Jay to enjoy a breakfast peanut. But I never did see him enjoy it. He nervously flitted around for about 20 minutes and then flew away with the peanut in his beak.

I think there must be some Aesop moral here about enjoying what you have at the moment., unless of course he was a thief himself. Then the moral would be completely different.

1 comment:

  1. You make me laugh. And make me want to think of the alternate moral of the story. Maybe something like, stealing peanuts make you really paranoid. Or how about keeping a peanut that is too big to swallow leads to a life of endless vigilance. These are great blogs, Lynn. The photos are wonderful.

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