By The Campfire

May 2, 2008

My mother is 84 years old, hard of hearing and has three blueberry bushes in her backyard. Each produces a different kind of blueberry. I have no horticultural bent so I am not aware of the species or varieties. I know each bush produces a different size fruit and all of them are blue. Therein lies my knowledge of blueberries.

Every year, a family of mockingbirds turns one of the bushes into a condo. This has happened every year since the 1970’s. The 2008 model mockingbirds started their new nest this week.

“I am staying away from those blueberry bushes until those baby birds have flew the nest,” said my mother. “Mockingbirds can pop a knot on your head if you’re not careful.”

If you are under the biological misconception that birds are stupid because they have little heads, small peckers and miniature brains, you’re wrong. Birds aren’t dumb. If you build your house in a blueberry bush, food is always right around the front door. That’s smarter than most people who have an hour commute to work.

We had a cat named Sally Goodin when I was in high school. SallyG was no puss. She caught snakes, birds, squirrels and meow’d fear into the neighborhood dogs. She found out just how protective those mockingbirds can be every time she did the catwalk across the backyard. The mockingbirds waited until she was pretty sure they had missed her and then they would attack, swooping down like pterodactyls to snatch a claw full of cat hair. The harassment was nonstop.

Before my father died, he experienced the mockingbird pop knots previously mentioned first hand – or head. I watched as he pushed the mower past the blueberry bush and in less time than it takes to say three good-sized curse words, he was running away and swinging at the halo of beaks and claws encircling his head. He still managed to get off at least two of those words and was rewarded with three bloody cuts on the top of his head. This was far past mocking and closer to violence.

Most people I know who wanted blueberries bad enough to fight for a few of the tasty orbs experienced one of these mockingbird muggings in the backyard. I wore a football helmet when I went out there. The birds pounded off the plastic, the facemask and the sound inside that helmet was Hitchcockian.

Then Rudy wandered into the line of fire. It was about three years ago and he likes blueberries about as good as anyone else who has gone through the gauntlet of my mother’s backyard. More than a few blueberries end up on the ground and he figures those are easy pickings. If perchance, you are unfamiliar with Rudy, he is our fearfully fearless Jack Russell mentioned here often. He lives a life that could easily be the storyline for a book about dog adventures and I have often thought of writing it. Rudy is like a character from Larry David’s brain, except he has four legs and eats his own poop.

At the time, Rudy had no formal training with birds so he had no idea that he was strolling into harm’s way when he rolled into the vicinity patrolled by the mockingthugs. For them, he was just another mark.

As he approached the bush, chest out, head focused on the berries, a mockingbird jumped out to the edge of a limb as to gain a better dive bomb angle.

SWOOOOOSH! WHAAAACK! ARRRRRRF! SMAAACK! FLOP! LOUDER ARRRRRF! OWWWWWWWWW! HOWLLLL! SMACK! SMACK! CRUNCH!

Rudy took a full load of bird and the bird didn’t let up. I think Rudy must have known something was wrong once he slipped his tongue out to grasp that first berry and the bird descended onto the back of his thick neck. Rudy’s eyes rolled back in time to catch a snout-full of mockingbird wing, then a tuft of hair flew up and the beak came down like an aerial jackhammer in top of Rudy’s head. He muffled a bark but the words wouldn’t come. He grunted and arfed and danced in a tight circle, snapping at the air, missing the bird with each bite. The pounding of the bird’s beak against his skull made a terrible sound like pecans being fast-balled off of a wooden wall. Then the howling started.

Rudy can uncork a howl and some barking that would match any Jack Russell’s but this was low and gained momentum. The bird straddled his head and Rudy floundered into the bush and stop-dropped-and-rolled as the bird hovered in fierce, slapping and dipping, picking his aim like Sugar Ray Leonard with a dope on the ropes.

Then Rudy did something that I’d never seen any man or beast do in a full-out mockingbird attack – he flipped completely, like a Granby in wrestling and on his way back around, caught the bird by surprise and clamped down on it with his canines.

The bird went limp. Rudy held it there for a few seconds, studying the bird. All four eyes from the two creatures bulged in a cartoonish manner. Then Rudy let the bird go, backed up and waited. The shocked mocker peeled off into the sky and watched from a loblolly limb, shaking and screaming into the sky. Rudy eyed the bird and snagged a few more blueberries and trotted back to the house, knots on his head and a little blood on his ears where the bird had ridden him like a little bull for a while early in the altercation.

He looked around and when the bird returned into the blueberry bush, Rudy slowly eased back inside the danger zone, but this time, the bird stayed in the bush. Rudy looked about at me like, “What? Isn’t he going to play some more?”

That day, Rudy learned about mockingbirds and the mockingbird learned about Jack Russells. When it comes to dogged determination, a mockingbird is no match for a Jack. To the bird, this was life and death. To Rudy, this was how he plays.

Word must have gotten around the mockingbird community down there because ever since then, the mockingbirds let him have all the blueberries he wants. Thankfully, unlike the birds, Rudy can’t fly over my car after he eats them.

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