Iiiiiiiii just want to fly

Yesterday evening we spent some time at the cool neighbors' house so Junior could play and we could recover from our exciting and very hot day. When I decided it was time for me to go water the plants, the cat and I headed back for home (he always follows us and will wait for us to go back home). Mr. Tat Cat immediately spots this little guy:

And for an old, fat, lazy cat, Tat is pretty quick to investigate and start licking his chops. So I run and scoop up 20 pounds of cat and get him back home so he won't eat baby Mockingbird. Can you see his downy fluff on his head? Baby is so cute!

When I go back outside I can hear mama Mockingbird screaming her head off and I also notice that someone else had tried to cross the road:

Yes, that poor small bump in the road is baby's brother. And now...guess who's running straight for the road??!! Baby!! Mother is still screaming her head off and baby's just running full-tilt. No flapping of wings, just running.

Besides the obvious danger of the road, there are about 3 carnivorous kittehs across the street. Sometimes these kittehs will stalk my bird feeders and I have to bust out the air-soft machine gun. Don't worry - they only shoot small plastic BBs and it's powered by 4 AA batteries so it's not even close to being lethal. I only use it as a "get the hell out of my yard" tool and the sound is much worse than the hit. But it is a MACHINE GUN and the boys modified the safety so you just pull the trigger and fire like crazy and watch those bird eaters (or stray dogs, or devient teenagers) scatter! And I'm getting way off topic, back to the story.

Husband and neighbors notice I'm doing some kind of crazy dance in the spare lot and come over to investigate. I put them on cat watch and go inside for something to shoo baby back away from the road. I grabbed the TV Guide thinking if we flapped the pages open and closed at him, baby will be scared and run away.

Not exactly. Husband flapped pages and this made baby just sit there. He tried again and baby gave him his best little aggressive hop, shake and "If you don't go away and leave me the hell alone I WILL KILL YOU" hiss with his open mouth. It was enough to make Husband and I both jump back and I HATE that I missed that pic! Very funny. Trust me, I do not want to come to that kind of ending. What an obituary that would be, "died tragically while trying to save a baby mocking bird."

Neighbor man decided to scoop up baby and move him back near the possible nest tree.

Which really didn't do a lot for mama Mockingbird. She raised A LOT of sand and we all kept an eye on her but not once did she try to attack us. Maybe she knew we were trying to help.

I can't wait to get home this afternoon and see if the drama repeats itself. I'm praying there will NOT be another bump in the road.