Trees Full of Yellowheads

One of the things I love about my house and where it’s located is the quiet. At night, even in the busy winter season, we can usually hear a vehicle coming down the road from miles away, and can tell the difference if it’s a car or truck. Every once in awhile though, we have an irrigator who persists in blasting his car stereo as if there’s nobody in those 4 or 5 houses in this square mile who are trying to sleep.

It’s the irrigator’s job, mostly, to keep an eye on the field that’s getting water and make sure the road doesn’t get flooded and things like that. It takes a full 24 hours sometimes to flood a field, which is why these guys work at night.

Last night was one of those nights, and I got precious little sleep. When I got up in the morning, I was rather out of sorts, to say the least. I’d been beating myself up over not getting a better job lately, which didn’t help any. After all, it’s not like I’ve got big bills I can’t pay, or that I need money to live on. It’s just that I simply can’t bring myself to make my husband pay for things that are mostly related to my own expensive pursuits. Not to mention we’ve got several birthdays coming up in short order.

So it was in that frame of mind I headed off to my little job at the library. It was a good day, though, very busy, which I like, laced with a few of those “you had to be there” jokes that wouldn’t make any sense if I tried to duplicate them here. It’s especially good when I can help somebody find the books they need, and get them started on research projects. Not only that, but one of our regulars begged me to let her read my book, even though it isn’t catalogued yet. By the time I shut down for the day at 5, my mood had improved.

I was also looking forward to dinner; not only because I’d been listening to my stomach growl since 2, but because my husband called me up and said he was roasting a chicken on the grill, and was experimenting with a cornbread recipe, which I knew had to be pretty good.

When I got out of the car at home, I had to stop and look around for a minute. It looked like our trees were full of yellowheads, and I had to make sure. Now, yellow-headed blackbirds are my favorite bird. Not only are they cool looking, but their call sounds like, “Big f**king deal!” Imagine two or three thousand of them saying that all at once, and the effect is hilarious.

Only I haven’t seen them around for years – almost a decade. They used to nest on the canal behind our house, but one year they went away and never came back. I never knew why, maybe it was a territorial thing and the redwings just took over. Sometimes in the late afternoon sun, a redwing will look like a yellowhead until you really look. So I stopped, and looked, and by golly, if it wasn’t my old buds, the yellowheads back! I could not have been happier to see them.

I believe that sometimes God will give you a message, if only you choose to recognize it. I think this was one of those times. I will not even try to analyze it, just enjoy it for what it was. One thing I know, with my yellowheads back, it can’t help but be a silly, fun, summer.