They are martching.

The second day we lived here I decided to take a break from unpacking to avoid the drama of speaking in tongues and Ben having to commit me. Yes, it was that bad. I sat on the back patio on the lounge chair and listened to the sounds of our new neighborhood. A mower off in the distance, kids riding bikes down the street, the cars on Blossom Hill, Cameron farting. It was nice. Well, most of it was nice.

KC was exploring the yard. Sniffing everything, tasting the grass and acting generally skiddish at every noise she heard. She’s never been an outside cat. I was watching her when she suddenly became very still and her eyes got as big as milk saucers the way they do when she hears a can of tune opening. I looked up and there was a humming bird hovering about 25 feet from us. I sat very still and watched in awe as it sat there, mid air, perfectly still except the wings flapping so fast you couldn’t see them… then it flew about four feet from my face. It felt like it was so close that I could reach out and touch it but I stayed still. Then it flew the six feet over to KC and got about four feet from her and hovered there for a second. KC didn’t move a muscle.

When the bird was done scoping us out it flew over to my hibiscus plant and sucked all of the flowers dry. Then, after taking one last look at us, flew away… and KC went nuts. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a declawed cat try to climb a fence but it’s quite a sight. A sad but funny moment. Like watching a stranger walk face first into a wall. I ran in the house and told Ben that we absolutely HAD to get a hummingbird feeder RIGHT NOW SO THE BIRD DOESN’T STARVE!

The next weekend Cameron and I were at Target picking up some stuff for the house and we looked at the feeders. They had some really nice ones. Beautiful actually. Like the Tara of Hummingbird feeders. (Shame on you all if you don’t know what Tara is.) I picked one out I really liked and put it in the cart and started to try and find the hummingbird food. There was none. We must have walked up and down the isle’s 5 times and there was no food there. Only feeders. This upset me. Being the rational person I am, I put the $15.00 hummingbird feeder back on the shelf amidst a rant about how stupid the Target corporation is and how COULD THEY sell feeders but no food and I wasn’t about to contribute to the stupidity… looking back now I think I might have been premenstrual.

A few days later I bought a $5.00 feeder at Safeway and told two employees how nice it was that they had FOOD to go with their feeders. I love Safeway.

The first few weeks the food went slowly but steadily. We saw hummingbirds out there every day feeding and hovering and checking things out. It was cool. Cassidy and I would sit out there after homework and watch them.

This week I haven’t seen a single one. I didn’t think this was odd because I think they migrate and figured that now that it’s getting cooler that maybe they had left for the season. But the food level was getting lower. It was going surprisingly fast actually but I didn’t really give it a lot of thought till today when I saw a bird fly up, check out the feeder and fly away without drinking any nectar. I went outside to check out the feeder and see what was going on and… It’s got ants. 🙁 Lots and lots and lots of ants.

I remember reading on the Target feeders box that it was “ant proof”. I should have gotten the damn Target feeder. Stubbornness has a way of always biting my ass. Not in the good way I like but the bad way that Ben likes to point out and laugh at.

Stupid ants. I watched them for a bit wondering how exactly ANTS were drinking more than the birds did the first week. I don’t think they are drinking it. If you click the picture above you can see that the ant coming out of the feeder flower on the left is almost transparent because it’s full of nectar. It’s FILLED it’s back half with the liquid. I think they must be transporting it because all the ants coming to the feeder are small and black and all the ants leaving the feeder are fat and clear.

STUPID ANTS. They should know better than to mess with a crazy and premenstrual woman. This, my friends, is war.

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