We live on the edge of a beautiful wooded section of the county, and we really feel mostly blessed.
Every once in a while, the wildlife comes out and tries to lessen our livestock numbers and rainy periods will cause the creek to overflow, and rearrange our landscaping for us. As of late, we have been slightly burdened with a pesky bird, a male cardinal, that just loves to go to our vehicle mirrors, and act out! We don`t mind the noise that it makes, or the little greasy beak smudge marks that it leaves on the mirrors.
The problem that it presents is it poops. Now if it were a rat that was chewing through a feed container, or a contrary raccoon that likes our hens, and wants to have dinner with them, we would have tried measures to handle those situations.
Needless to say, this was a first for us. Now we have in the past put a mirror along the outer edge of the chicken run, just for entertainment purposes, and I have seen on a YouTube channel where some folks in other countries have put up mirrors to get the reactions of the neighboring occupants of gorillas and big cats.
Those videos bring a lot of views, as they show a side of the animals that frankly, the animals didn`t know they had!
The cardinal started leaving his messages of poop a few months ago, and we figured that maybe it would tire of the view, or even learn that it was only looking at itself, but NO! It happened every day, and to both my pickup truck, and my wife`s car.
Most of the time, we would wash it off as we found it, but there was one time where we had to quickly head away from home, and didn`t erase the “message” in time. After a comment was made by a family member, we decided to get a bit more aggressive in combating the problem. I mentioned to my wife that there had to be some easy and cheap way of solving the problem, and the idea of blocking the mirrors was “hatched.”
My wife has stored some garments just a little longer than they needed to be saved, and she had the idea of making mirror “sleeves” from an old night coat.
The mirrors on the truck were substantially larger than the car`s mirrors, so a pair of denim jeans were sacrificed for them. For the most part, this plan worked great.
Then, this week rolled around. We had some medical emergencies from both sides of our families, and our sleep disrupted. So, the other night, I made a late run to the Walmart, and forgot to pull the sleeves from the car. Once I got to the parking lot about 1 1/2 miles down the road I noticed my mistake. I did my shopping, then slowly doubled back across my path, and found the missing sleeve. I felt bad about even mentioning this “event” to my wife, but the very next day, she did the same thing!
The story may sound a bit odd to some of you readers out there, but here is the “inset lesson.” We didn`t have to resort to animal cruelty to solve the problem, and given time or the natural life span of the bird this too shall pass. If you are cruising around the parking lots of those big box stores looking for the best place to park, you may just see a few other vehicles with that #2 problems going on.
It is for you folks out there that can relate that I share this messy dilemma, in the hope that what we have done may save your sanity and your paint job, because vanity can be a “cardinal” sin!
I hope that you all have a blessed week, until we can do this again!
