Rev. Ivan Stang

It's already Halloween in a little jar on my dining room table.

But, as I'd predicted, we couldn't let go that easily -- luckily for 2Pay-Z. Against Wei's advice I wanted to go get a closer look and make sure 2Pay-Z was okay on the ground. I strolled over to the garage in a leisurely manner and came upon 2Pay-Z standing between two cars -- calmly facing a BIG GREY CAT which was slowly creeping toward him from maybe four feet away. 2Pay-Z was standing there with his neck stretched out and his little beak wide open, patiently waiting for the nice puddy-tat to drop some food into his mouth!  The puddy-tat seemed momentarily nonplussed by this, but was still about to pounce. The adult Jays were going absolutely nuts with their siren-like hollering in tandem. I charged the cat, yelling, and it reluctantly fled.

During the night, 2Pay-Z appeared to have doubled in size. In fact we calculated during Saturday morning that he was doubling in size approximately every four hours. According to my figuring, by Sunday he would be like the Roc hatchling in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad -- about the size of a young elephant. All the bird-doctor advice on the web said to put him back where his mom and dad could find him. After conferring with Joe we decided to put him (in his box) back near the nest, and watch to see if Ma and Pa would start feeding him again -- seeing as how he would require being fed constantly for a few more weeks...

But Joe had to go to bed early Friday night and work all day Saturday! We are old friends, so we took on the bird-feeding job until he could get back to it on Saturday night.

Last Friday afternoon, our next-door neighbor Joe found two baby birds in his driveway -- one dead and drawing flies in the sun, one in the shade of his Jeep, still alive, but barely. Joe looked straight up, and sure enough, in the tree next to his garage, there was a nest. Flying all around and squawking at him were two Blue Jays.