PRAIRIE DAYS

Today the hands of time took me back to the prairies and stops me at nearly five years old. The frost is out of the ground, the creeks are running and my older siblings have walked off to school. My baby sister seems to be mainly good for looking cute and keeping Mother busy feeding and doing laundry. Dad has shouldered a spade and is checking the dikes. Mother is starting to make soap to replenish laundry supplies when I ask to go out to play in the south pasture. The birds are busy with nesting and tuning up their grass shacks. Mother is glad to see me out of the house to be sure I don't get into the lye she uses to make soap. A few years before I had sampled the sweet tasting but poisonous fly paper she kept in small lids on the window sill. That morning she had somehow found time to read the "Homemakers Column" in the weekly Free Press which contained the antidote for this poison; milk, readily available on the farm. The nearest clinic is in Medicine Hat, 65 horse drawn-miles away.
Since age four I had my own self-appointed job waiting for me in the pasture, a childish war against the cowbirds. They laid their eggs in the nests of other birds that placed a burden on the rightful nest owner. When the nest owners noticed me, of course they dive bombed and tried to get me out of their territory. But I would dodge through the thorny bushes, with bleeding knees and sure enough find the speckled eggs of the cowbird cuddling comfortably with those of the rightful nest owner. Of course they didn't realize their parents were welfare bums and being a little larger bird would reach over and easily get the food first. I always wondered why the true parents didn't pitch the speckled eggs out and save me the trouble. What I didn't know at that time was that when the true parents tried to do so they were punished by the larger cowbirds who would toss out the eggs or chicks of the true nest owners. So I was doing more harm than good. I tried to help by gathering worms and dropping them into these wide-open beaks. One of my older brothers told me later, "You have to chew it up for them first!" In the meantime cowbird mothers had little to do except cavort around and eyeball other males whom they felt sure might not be welfare fathers. Does this remind you of some of the adult wars around the globe or the British complaint "The burden of the colonies".
Suzie-Q