Published: July 03, 2009 08:43 am      

Jim Atwell: Still another award

All right, it’s time for me to continue announcing the awards for exceptional service by our domestic staff at Stone Mill Acres. You’ll remember that the first went to Anne for tactfully banishing a slug from the a dinner salad, and the second to Blue for gallantly defending his buddy Simon the cat from an affable, overweight corgi.

The third award goes to Simon himself for extraordinary bravery under fire.

Before I can describe the event, I’ll have to do some scene-setting.

You already know that Simon, successor to the late Owen of such happy memory, is a young cat, only coming up on his second birthday. And you know that, unlike the taciturn Owen, Simon never stops talking. If he’s out near the barn and you call him, he vocalizes all the way to the house. Inside, he follows around any human at hand and comments on everything the person does. Other times, alone upstairs or down, he will sit, meowing about anything that comes into his head.

With that said, however, he’s a great little cat and, it turns out, a game one, too. This was demonstrated last week when, to reestablish some temporary quiet in the house, Anne urged Simon out the back door.

Urged him out, as it happened, right into a scene of familial panic and tragedy. Perhaps you like blue jays. I don’t. Granted, they’re handsome birds, beautiful in flight and even while preening on a limb. But they’re coarse, unprincipled birds, too, given to robbing other birds’ nests and shouting vulgarities at every passing human.

I suspect their coarse edginess mars their domestic life, too. When a female lays an egg or two, she and her mate are good parents, protecting their own nest with the same energy with which they despoil others’. They both feed the gaping mouths that greet them on every return with food.

(Perhaps it’s my bias, but while other baby birds chirp prettily at that moment, young jays are as demanding and ungrateful as any sullen teenager.)

When the moment comes literally to launch their young from the nest, I wonder if strife develops between the parent jays.

I can imagine a cawing argument between them, ending with the father booting the baby out and into the air. Most times, the moment is right, and the baby revs its engine, spreads stubby wings, and flies into life to follow the family tradition of spreading mayhem.

But it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes the bird is launched too soon and drops to the ground like an overripe apple. And sometimes, I imagine, the irascible baby won’t wait, and launches itself to the same effect. Once the fledgling is on the ground, there’s nothing the parents can do but fly around in panic, shouting accusations at each other.

There is no chance of survival is such a case. At worst, the baby bird will die slowly of hunger and thirst. At best, some other creature will quickly bring things to term. Tragic, maybe; but such dramas go on constantly all around us. Nature is ``red in tooth and claw,’’ and we can only accept the grim fact. Or, translated into Disneyese, we must honor the Great Circle of Life.

Well, enter Simon, just emerging from the back door. He spotted the stranded jay, instinctively knew his part, and undertook it at once.

If there had been wild screeching before, imagine what broke out then overhead. As Simon tried to carry out his assigned role, the sky was rent with screams, fierce caws, horrific threats. The cat retreated under the peonies, lugging the still form with him. But then he emerged to face, not only a torrent of abuse from above, but strafing by the two birds.

Simon flattened himself into the grass, ears back, trying to reduce himself to two dimensions and turn into a kind of cat carpet. But the birds, bent on revenge, swooped lower and lower, finally whacking the back of his head with their claws. The cat’s no fool. As the jays climbed and wheeled for another bombing run, he scooted under the peonies again, presumably to complete the job that Nature had meant him to do.

I’m not sure why Simon first came out from under that bush — whether it was bravery or foolhardiness; but either way I was impressed by the way he held his ground, flat as a flounder, lashing his tail. And I certainly don’t fault him for retreating again under the bush. That was simple prudence and quite apt. He’d made his gesture, after all, and didnÆt need to be suicidal about it. That’s why I am awarding him special recognition for courage under fire.

Simon has not, however, forgotten that day. As often as he comes out the back door, he pauses to scan the branches of the basswood tree. They could be up there, you see, still ready to wreak vengeance.

Oh, my! I haven’t left room to tell you about the fourth award, the one to me. We’ll have to wait till next week to find out what it is. I wonder, what it will be?

Read about Jim Atwell’s book, From Fly Creek--Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country at JimAtwell. com.