Saturday, December 18, 2010

A WATER THINGY

Getting old is not fun. There are 2 things that go first – your memory……….. um,…………… and I forget what the other thing was. I have had trouble connecting faces and names for a long time… after teaching a thousand kids a year for a hundred years or so, I long ago gave up on names. Fortunately no one ever sued me for sexual harassment for calling them Honey, or Sweetheart, because I learned early on to do that. I realized how good I was at it the day I said “Hon, will you bring me some towels?” expecting the kid closest to the towels would respond and instead I had about a dozen kids jump up and grab for some towels to bring to me. (In an art room there are always stacks of paper towels around.) They were ALL my “Honeys!”

But then I started losing names for THINGS! Sigh. Well, I had always had the problem of switching languages… I think it is common in families that are somewhat bi-lingual… we often mixed languages in the same sentence which was not a problem as long as the people you were talking to spoke the same combination of languages. It is frustrating when folks look at you like you are nuts and you don’t have a clue that you just switched from one language to another, only for one word… I wish we had a way to send a visual picture from my mind to yours – then you would know what I am talking about. So, now my frustration is losing words in more than one language!

Anyway, the water thingy came today. OK, it is a birdbath heater, they say. But it is heating the water, not the birdbath. Whatever. So far it seems to be working. The robins love it. However, they were very cautious, only one brave tiny soul at a time ventured to the edge for a drink. The others sat near by watching. Maybe it is because it is so shiny. It is also very light weight, consequently the frog sitting in the middle to keep it in place. DSC_0808

While I was fixing dinner, the first deer arrived. Again, it was only one at a time… and it was too dark to get a picture. After dinner, I had to refill the birdbath.  DSC_0807

Fortunately the black birds stayed out front by the feeders. I swear, there were over a hundred of them at one point. They emptied 4 feeders. Sigh. So, I guess I will be off to the Tractor Supply place when the roads clear. Maybe they will have one of those water heater thingies for deeper containers so I can provide water for the deer like I did last summer when it was so dry.

Hope the weather is better at your place than mine!

3 comments:

ancient one said...

Cold rain and a little sleet here today. My husband got the water thingy from Tractor Supply in Greenville NC..

possum said...

A Sunday morning update... the last gallon of water was still in the birdbath this morning, not frozen! YEAH! It was fun to watch the deer come, one at a time, to drink. We all think that eating snow is good enough for them, but apparently they prefer real wet water!
We had another little dusting of snow, maybe a quarter inch... the road is black ice out front - but there is fresh water for everyone! OK, I know I am silly.
Going to try to get up to the Tractor Supply place tomorrow - its only 60 miles!

Beatrice P. Boyd said...

Possum, maybe the blackbirds were all at your place today cause I didn't see any here, but then the feeders were still empty from last week and they are smart enough to know that. I put safflower seed in them today so will be watching tommorrow morning to see if it keeps them away. Glad the robins and deer are happy with the water thingy that heats the birdbath.