On Parenting

As I type away at my computer this morning, I can see out the sliding glass door our resident mourning doves pecking away on the bird feeder. Just yesterday, I saw he/she in the nest up in the little space in the overhang that covers the front patio. They were there last year, too.

I read on the Internet that mourning doves make irresponsible parents. Sometimes they sit on old eggs beyond hatching, while sometimes they abandon their nests leaving their eggs. The nests they make are just  some twigs and hardly anything Martha Stewart would put her name to.

Since that overhang area was to be covered for the fumigation last year, we had no choice but to remove the nest and block it off with some screening so they wouldn’t come back until it was safe to do so. The nest we found up there was a mish marsh of twigs, and contained two tiny eggs. We felt terrible but…

Now the screening is down and they’ve taken up residency. The other day, one dove was sitting on the nest, while the other dove flitted around in the bushes below. The sitting dove then fluttered off the nest and joined the flitting dove, and the two flew off together—maybe the Hampton’s for the weekend, who knows. A wily crow could have swept in and robbed the abandoned nest and anything in it—such as an egg or two. HA! And I think I was a bad parent.

            All right, I left the “nest” once, leaving the kiddies all alone. The year was 1960 and we were young. Tom and Cheryl were little, but certainly old enough to dial the Child protective agency to report us—if there was such an agency in those days—but young enough to need a sitter, which we should have provided. After all, we rationalized, we’d be outside in the neighbor’s yard, only two houses away, the kiddies would be all right. It was a lovely summer evening, windows were open and…

Well, they were okay, thanks to diligent 5 year old Tommy who on our arrival home we found sitting on the bottom bunk bed where his 3 year old sister Cheryl, was fast asleep. His five year old eyes glared at us. “Don’t you know you should never leave children home alone?”  We were properly admonished.

Just call us Mr. and Mrs. Dove.