Under our Porch
“She’ll end up giving up,” Keith predicted. Through the glass of our double doors, we watched a female cardinal flying to and from our back porch. On each trip, she would bring in her beak a twig and drop it on the farthest corner ledge under the porch. We kept watching her ‘mission impossible’: flight after flight, the twigs would fall to the ground. “She can’t figure out that the ledge is too narrow!” I sighed. “What if we could put something there to make it wider?” Then Keith found a wooden stick and nailed it across the corner ledge. By the end of the third day, Mama Cardinal had built a nest! Yet, for a while, the nest remained empty. We were somewhat relieved to think we would not need to avoid getting out on the back porch and risk scaring Mama Cardinal… Until she returned. Night and day she lay there and rarely left, committed to her soon-to-hatch eggs… Today, Papa Cardinal flew in, bringing something in his beak. Three tiny heads wobbled up from the cup-sha...