Our
back yard wasn’t big, I know now. Each visit back made it smaller, and I wonder
how we ever played ball back there. The clotheslines cut the porch off from the
patio, which was nothing but a covered concrete slab slapped onto the back of
the garage. The patio faced north. To the west were the compost bins and
woodpiles, stacked against our neighbor’s fence.
The
north fence, ten feet from the patio’s far edge, was covered with honeysuckle
vines, tangles of green with bright white flowers and bulbous red berries. The
berries drew the birds in bunches: there was no shortage of sparrows and
finches of all sizes, from tiny pine siskins to chunky evening grosbeaks.
One
particular summer the grass was littered with the latter for several weeks, chattering
clumps of plump gold-blazed, brown-yellow birds. I’d seen small sparrows flock our
lawn like that before, falling in in swirling clouds, but never birds so big as
the grosbeaks. Their descent would have been apocalyptic, had they not been so
beautiful.
The
birds in turn drew the neighborhood’s outdoor cats. My father, Audubon member
and wild bird aficionado, took the birds’ side. He bought a large
catch-and-release trap and baited it with tuna. Whatever cats he caught got a
thorough hosing-down before being let go. Few tangled twice with his trap.
