This morning I was out hanging laundry on the line and there was a little brown bird flying around and chirping her fool head off. She kept lighting on the end of one of the arms of the clothesline and chirping incessantly and annoyingly. I couldn’t figure out what was going on with her but I decided she must be taunting Åsa, who was stalking around a few feet away. When the bird just would not shut up and go away, I decided to do a little further investigating, and at the corner of the garage this is what I saw (and nearly stepped on):

It was sitting so still that I wasn’t sure at first that it was alive. The long stalk in front of it is the dandelion stem I used to poke it. After determining that it was, indeed, still among the living–and not injured as far as I could see–I scooped up Åsa (who, by the way, hadn’t noticed it yet, so Mama Bird had done her job well) and shut her inside the house. Once the imminent danger was gone, the mother bird got busy getting her baby out of there and back to where it belonged. I gave them a wide berth to go about their business, and when I checked on them fifteen minutes or so later, they were gone and there was a marked absence of chirping, which led me to believe that all had gone well.

While we were playing with the camera, I decided to take a picture of the new nose stud I got in the mail today. I ordered it online from a company in the UK, and it’s exactly what I wanted. Weird that I couldn’t find the same thing here, but at least I’ve got it now. There’s no absence of nose studs in the places I’ve checked locally, but I’m adamant about using titanium or surgical steel, and there doesn’t seem to be much of that available ’round these parts. Anyway, this isn’t a terrific picture, but you do get the idea. It’s a little silver stud with a clear “jewel” in the center. I’m just pleased as punch with it.