Monday, August 1, 2011

Stories from Northern Wisconsin (Pt 2)

At some point or another I bet you've seen a hummingbird, perhaps not in real life, maybe in a picture. The point is that you know what they are and that they move at ridiculously fast speeds. The majestic birds come in every color, brown, green, blue, silver. Some people are under the myth that these birds are not able to ever stop moving their little wings, this I have found to be false. While they seem to not sit in any given place for a long period of time, hummingbirds are perfectly capable of sitting completely still. If they're wings were to stay in motion perpetually, then whenever you went outside you would be forced to ask yourself, "when are the distant helicopters going to arrive?". Because that is exactly what they sound like, or extremely loud bumblebees; this is probably where they get the "Humming" part of their name.

The other notion about Hummingbirds is that they are peaceful, serene, wise creatures. This I'm not too sure about either. When we stay at our cabin, we leave out a Hummingbird feeder. My mom makes up a sugar water concoction that is lapped us like a sweet sweet nectar. But once they've had a taste, well the miniature helicopters get territorial. They viciously guard the feeder from each other, swooping up and down, while making high pitched tweets. As I laid in the hammock outside I had a front row seat to the warring Hummingbird factions. Little bomber jets whirring screeching at each other, guarding what each felt was rightly theirs.

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