Sunday, October 21, 2007

Bird feeders: Good or Bad or indifferent?

I have an American friend who recently bought and set up a Bird feeder on her Patio, to feed the hungry birds nearby. It was a wonderful thing to do wouldn’t you think? Yet it wasn’t too long before she removed it completely. Why?

Here is the reason in her own words: “I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and filled it with seed. Within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the
continuous flow of free and easily accessible food. But then the birds started building nests in the boards of the patio, above the table, and next to the barbecue. Then came the poop. It was everywhere: on the patio tile, the chairs, the table ... everywhere. Then some of the
birds turned mean: They would dive bomb me and try to peck me even though I had fed them out of my own pocket. And others birds were boisterous and loud: They sat on the feeder and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and night and demanded that I fill it when it
got low on food. After a while, I couldn't even sit on my own back porch anymore. I took down the bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone. I cleaned up their mess and took down the many nests they had built all over the patio. Soon, the back yard was like it used to be ... quiet, serene and no one demanding their rights to a free meal.”

Isn’t that a great illustration of how bad habits often come into our lives? We see something pretty and attractive ‘out there’ and so we set out to encourage “it/them’ into our lives, only to find that along with the ‘Pretty” comes “the pretty nasty” too, and pretty soon the nasty and noisy take over and start to dominate our lives, building their “little nests” and leaving their excrement, anywhere and every where they please, with absolutely no regard to us.

The only way to deal with this problem is like how my friend dealt with the birds. Stop feeding them and removing their “nests’ or hold on you. Stop encouraging them, and soon they will drop away and find easier pickings elsewhere.

Sure one or two will probably hang around but you have to be careful even then not to feed them either or else you will start the whole cycle all over again. Once is more than enough as my friend with the birds has discovered. So what is your “Hungry, angry Bird”, and what do you need to do to remove its attractions. Along with not continuing to feed them, what nests do you need to remove it, and how much “poop” can/will you remove?

There comes a time when you must take personally responsibility for what you have done. Like my friend who first put out the seed, it was also she who had to stop doing it and clean up the resultant mess. What about you too? It is not enough to want to change things in your life; you also need to take positive action too. Again like my friend it will often be one step at a time and in correct order too.

It would have been pointless for her to clean up the “poop” and even remove the nests, as long as she kept feeding and encouraging them to stay, wouldn’t it? So what are you going to do about the “Noisy, Messy Birds” in your life? It really is all up to you! Walter

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