Jump Start & the Nest

This is how I spent my lunch hour today – getting a jump start for my car and then taking it up to have it checked out. This is not how I planned to spend my lunch hour. No, I had errands I needed to run, but instead, this was what I did. It is no fun to get into your car only to realize that instead of turning on all you hear is a clicking sound. I was able to get a jump start from security and got it to my car place. My mom then picked me up & took me back to work (then after work, Josh picked me up & took me back to get the car). It turns out, it WAS the battery, but since I had just bought a new battery 2 years ago, I didn't have to pay full price (some pro-rated warranty thing based off of a 60 month warranty). This was a relief since the battery harness that I also needed (has anyone ever heard of this???) costs $380!!! So $450 later, I left with my new battery & new battery harness. And the nice man even gave me 10% off & had my car washed – I think he felt bad.

Yesterday we decided to take a walk in the afternoon since it was nice out & the rain hadn’t moved in yet. As we walked out the front door, I noticed some pine straw near the top of one of the pillars of our front porch. When we got back from the walk, Josh got his ladder out & climbed up to see – it was a nest, but no eggs or anything in it. Since there were no eggs inside, we decided to move it (we weren’t sure we wanted birds making a home in the top of our porch, but had there been eggs there, we would have left it alone). This is the first time any of us had seen a nest up close. They are amazing! I would love to watch some sped-up video of a bird making a nest just to see how they do it because all the pine straw and grass was all woven together such that it held its perfect little nest shape when Josh moved it – nothing was falling off that nest. But the other really interesting thing about this nest is the other materials the bird used to construct it. We peered inside the nest and saw fibers from our carpet had been woven in! As you know, we had new carpet put in last month, and they did all the cutting in the driveway. This left a bunch of fibers all over the driveway that we figured that wind & rain would eventually take care of. We never thought that birds might use it in their nests. We also saw dryer lint and some of Herschel’s fur used in the nest construction. It was really quite amazing. Once we had finished admiring it, Josh, with the assistance of our next-door neighbor, placed the nest in one of the trees in our front yard. Seemed like a more suitable place for a nest to be anyway. We’ll see if any birds decide to make it their home now.