The Bluebird of Happiness

By Terry Deighton, Guest Blogger

Liz is off doing something fun, I hope, so I am taking her turn on the blog today. It's my daughter's twenty-fifth birthday. That's not so bad except that she's my third child, so there are two even older. How did that happen? The worst thing is that the twins up and went off to college last month. That was like killing two birds with one stone. Their older sister was home for a while. She said that a bird in the house was worth two at college, but then she got a job and moved away. It's an empty nest around here. Whose bird brained idea was it to let them all grow up?

The little chickadees used to chirp and cry until I thought I'd become a bird brain. They were owly and flighty, and sometimes they had fowl tempers. Then, just when they were starting to get interesting, they flew the coop for hours at a time driving our Eagle and only came home to roost long after the sun went down. They didn't give a hoot that the old crows back home were worried sick that they had become jail birds or worse. They were flying high with their flock of friends and trying out their wings.

They did come around occasionally for some scratch. They thought our hard earned money was just chicken feed. One silly goose about laid an egg when we told her to save half of her money as a nest egg for college. We told her to feather her nest while times were good. After all, the early bird catches the worm. She's glad she has a nest egg now!

Now the time has come, and the last of them have gone south for the winter. It really sticks in my craw that they don't bird call home more often. I'm just like a mother hen whose little chicks are lost.

Really, they've given us something to crow about. We're as proud as a couple of peacocks of our little brood. May the bluebird of happiness rest on their shoulders!