We Are Stardust

I was sitting outside this morning, staring into the sky and contemplating how we’re all made from carbon, and carbon is created in the stars, so we really are stardust. Buck was sitting across me but I don’t know what he was doing. I think he was reading the newspaper. Then the dog grabbed a mourning dove and started killing it and we had to jump up and run across the backyard in our bare feet, stepping on cactus spines and jagged pine cones to chase after the dog and I only got him to let go of the bird when I threw a heavy, hardback copy of The Chicago Manual of Style at him to stun him long enough to get him in a strangle hold and throw him down on the ground while Buck was shouting and inadvertently throwing rocks at us both. The dove crawled into the bushes and I dragged the dog into the house and threw him into his pen and locked the door.

I returned to my seat and tried to forget about the dove in the bushes and get my head back to the place where we’re all stardust and I just couldn’t. So I limped out (I pulled a calf muscle during the mad dash) and retrieved my Chicago Manual of Style from the desert and opened an article to copyedit. I think Buck tried to erase it from his head by hiding in his office and reading the latest news on TMZ.

Jeebus.  I hate it when the day starts like this.

 

Technorati Tags: El Paso, mourning doves, stardust, Chicago Manual of Style

 

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The Doves of El Paso

 

If you look closely at this photo of my deserty backyard, you can see about twenty mourning doves eating dog food. Dry dog food, Pedigree brand, small bites for little dogs. Doves are crazy about dog food. I toss them a handful every morning while I’m drinking my coffee. I try and do it before Buck gets up because the racket made by dozens of mourning doves gets on his nerves first thing in the morning.

The doves here are nuts. If we leave a door open, one or two inevitably walk right into the house. They walk, not fly, into our house and start looking around like they’re thinking of buying the place. When you find them and chase them out, they walk out with a disgruntled look on their face. They walk very slowly out the same door they came in.

We can’t have a bird feeder here in El Paso. We tried it once. We filled a large bird feeder with seed and hung it from a tree. Within minutes, about 700 mourning doves descended on our backyard and we had to run into the house to get away from them. The noise they made was deafening. Buck said, “Don’t ever do that again.” I told him, “Ugh. Don’t worry, I won’t.”

But I do enjoy their company in the morning while I’m coffeeing up. Except for the slapping part. Yes ,slapping. That’s how they fight: they slap each other like they’re in a Three Stooges bit. It’s unsettling and I don’t like it. Last week, two of them got into a terrible slapping fight way up in a pine tree. It was violent and awful, I had go over and shake the tree just to make them stop.

Mourning doves build the worst nests in the world. They place four or five sticks on a tree branch then lay their eggs on top. The eggs fall and break on my patio, and I have to hose them off before the dogs run over and eat them. It’s gross as hell.

Last year a mourning dove left one of its babies in our courtyard. I had to worry over that thing for weeks until it was big enough to fly away. I hated that responsibility, and I’m too kind-hearted to ignore it. So I had to constantly check on this baby dove every few hours for weeks on end. It eventually flew away but it seemed to have taken forever. And the flying practice involved was unbelievable. He kept flying into my chair and I had to yell at him.

I know more about doves than I want to know. They’re okay, but if they all flew over to Mexico and I never saw them again I wouldn’t be upset.

 

Technorati Tags: mourning doves, El Paso

 

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