Today at Work

I don't write about work much, but it's not because interesting things don't happen at work. They do. Pretty much every day. I usually laugh hard at least one time per work day, usually more, at something someone says or does. Quality stuff. And being a gardener by trade, I am privy to my fair share of special moments in the non-human world- the first breeze of the year that smells like spring, a wild turkey fanning its tail to its lady friends in privacy on the country club golf course, a nest of spring eggs in a climbing rose, a snake that ventures out into the sun in February, fiddleheads uncurling day by day, the mysteriously chocolatey smell of a fringe tree in bloom, mating earthworms, a lily of the valley tucked behind my ear as a perfume all day. Stuff like that. Today at work, I simulateously witnessed the bastardization of the name "Sergio" into the name "Savior" by a good ole Western NC mulch blower who happens to love dried okra and McDonald's food, and who says that he knows his Spanish don't sound right but there's gotta be room in there for a little Country- (I agreed and said that's called "wiggle room") AND a phenomenon of nature in the form of a male cardinal protecting his territory against his own reflection in the side view mirrors and windows of my truck. He was so bothered, and he went at it for hours. He would fly down to the truck and attack the side view mirror/ side window a few times in a row. Then he would go up into the tree and tweet and sing like crazy- all bothered like- and then he would start the whole thing over. I didn't want the poor disillusioned fellow to wear himself out (or get a head trauma) so at lunch I folded in the side view mirrors so he couldn't see himself anymore. Did that stop him? No. Later in the afternoon I spotted him back at it again in his reflection on the side window. I wonder if he thought he finally chased the bastard away when I drove off at the end of the job... There was dookie all over the side of my truck, and I remembered a Car Talk caller who had the same problem- bird dookie all over the car all the time from a bird being bothered by his own reflection. Maybe they are not hard wired to comprehend the significance of a car mirror. It makes me wonder about all the things that are going on all around us that we as humans just don't comprehend at all.