8:48 PM -:- Posted by Allen    

O Wee O Wee O Wee O!

Most people tend to see the world and the events in it through their personal looking glasses, finding evidence of what they believe through a personalized interpretation of those events.

For example, the belligerent claimant in person. This is a guy who lives his rights and tolerates no infringement thereof without at least pitching a strenuous bitch. I'd really like to see him everywhere.

Meanwhile, I choose to think of something I saw the other day in my front yard as an example.

Our cat, Chewie (yellow medium-hair tabbie) is neighborhood-renowned as a master hunter. He catches everything from mice to squirrels, salamanders (foul taste, spits them out, snails too) to Blue Jays. Of course, he doesn't catch absolutely everything; he runs and hides from the hawk family from the next block over, and when a Great Horned Owl got sequestered in a birch across the street for an entire day by a murder of crows, Chewie turned into a wide-eyed scaredy-cat of the first degree. All that cawing, and the sheer size of the owl were simply outside his understanding of the world.

"But what about the hummingbirds?"

I did know that they are fearless in defending their territory and nests, and that with sabers right there on the fronts of their heads, they quickly teach other birds a lesson in the errors of trespass. But I never thought about a hummingbird beating up a cat.

Here's what happened.

Chewie was walking across the edge stones in front of the house, approaching the blue belles next to the porch. My hummingbird (well, an 'Allen's Hummingbird', anyway, the plain brown one with the irridescent green throat) was tripping from flower to flower, and Chewie noticed him as he came out of one of the flowers, about three feet away and less than two feet up.

"Easy prey," I heard Chewie think to himself, and he crouched slightly to begin the approach and attack.

That sudden crouch-move grabbed the humminbird's attention, and it jerked to the left toward the house, but then reversed to the right and flew out into the yard. Yet it didn't leave, it just parked there in the air about the same distance and height as before, but with nothing between it and Chewie.

Chewie turned toward the bird and re-crouched, but hesitated, maybe waiting for it to forget he was there. That's how cats catch most birds, and why they move in a bit and then stop and wait, then move in again, over and over: most birds can't see/detect animals that aren't moving or making noise. So the cat steals bits of ground over and over until it is too late for the bird because he's now close enought to make the dash before the bird can get far enough off the ground.

Sometimes, the cat is just plain brilliant. My brother's now-retired cat, Suxie, used to sit behind a mound in the back yard because she noticed that in the evening the birds liked to swoop down through the yard and up over that mound on their way to the dog's water dish (their party pool). She'd sit there, a bird would swoop down, glide up over the mound, and... slam right into her waiting mouth. Lazy b_tch!

Anyway, my hummingbird is fearless, no doubt about it. Everybody fears me (I've no idea why), but this little guy lands on me while I sit reading in the back yard, and actually pulls out my hair when he needs stuff for nest-building.

So about a second passes with neither of them moving, staring at each other. Then the hummingbird starts to swoop sideways slowly back and forth, taunting Chewie.

I'm thinking, "You really oughtn't to do that," just as Chewie pounces.

But the hummingbird must have had the same Tai Chi master I did; he flies in through Chewie's clasping paws, escaping capture.

And for good measure and just because he can, he stabs Chewie right between the eyes.

I'm impressed; Chewie can't believe it. And the humming bird comes back around, hovers into position, and starts the taunt again!

Chewie can't resist. After all, he is SuperCat, the greatest hunter who ever lived (on this block, anyway). No bird is going to humiliate him like that and not be morselized! So he pounces again.

Again, faster then lickety-split, the hummingbird is inside Chewies grasp, and... this time he pokes him twice in the forehead, rat-tat, so hard I could hear it. Chewie backed up so suddenly he was sitting on his ass looking cross-eyed at where the hummingbird had been.

But the hummingbird wasn't there any more; it was out in front once more, hovering, getting ready for the next round of taunting, etc.

But Chewie didn't crouch again. He just sat there in frozen stare until the hummingbird finally did forget he was there, at which point the hummingbird drifted off looking for some new interesting thing to do.

Yes, Virginia, the "little guy" can win!