What a paper kite taught me

My husband Pete planted 16 blueberry bushes on our small farm about 10 years ago, to complement the eight blueberry bushes planted decades ago by a previous owner. I love blueberries. But for the last two years, blueberry season has been the cause of my discontent.

The reason? Birds. We have hundreds of them here, and they stuff themselves on the tangy fruit so much that I am surprised that they can still haul their fat bodies off the ground and manage to fly.

For a few years we planted a plastic statue of a menacing-looking owl amid the bushes, but it was stationary and the birds all but laughed at our attempt to scare them off. They stripped the berries from their branches so fast last year I had barely time to pick a cupful before our farm’s feathered friends snarfed down all the berries my cereal and muffins be damned.

“That’s it,” I sputtered to Pete. “We have to build a frame over the bushes that will hold netting.” He agreed it would be a good winter project. Bob, a friend of ours with his own apple orchard and dozens of blueberry bushes, gave us reams of netting he no longer needed. Pete decided on the lumber he would purchase.

Then Pete fell and broke his leg on New Year’s Eve. Hobbling is not conducive to construction. By the time his full mobility returned he was so far behind in his planting and other work on the farm that I resigned myself to the infuriating sight of birds feasting on our blueberries for one more year.

But Pete researches everything. I mean, everything. And he hadn’t given up.

The kite almost unnerves ME, let alone our avian residents.

A few weeks ago, a box arrived. He opened it and showed me the contents. Pete had purchased a kite in the shape of a very large and menacing-looking eagle. It came with string, a flexible and very lengthy rod, much like a long fishing rod, and a way to anchor the whole thing in the ground. Pete had it up in a half hour, and Sam the Eagle began to dive and swoop over our blueberry bushes every time there was a puff of wind.

Ever since Sam got to work the birds have given the area a wide berth. I have had to duck a few times while picking blueberries myself, impressed by the sight of the paper bird’s big eyes and the nasty rattling sound of its wings when the wind is high enough. The kite almost unnerves ME, let alone our avian residents, who have decided that the berries are not worth risking certain death from a mere kite. The kite is no more a danger to them than the plastic owl we had perched in the middle of the blueberry fields for the last two years.

But the birds don’t know that it is perfectly harmless. They see it as a threat to life and limb. Reality tells a different tale.

This morning, as I filled containers of blueberries, I began to think of Sam as a metaphor. What am I afraid of that I see as a threat … that might not be one at all? What are the harmless kites that I see as menacing, when they are nothing of the kind?

Who knows? On some issues, I may be just as timid as the birds who now quake every time Sam swoops.

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Washington DC peeps! I will be at Busboys & Poets Takoma, 235 Carroll St. N.W. Washington, DC. 20012, Thursday, July 17 from 6 pm to 8 pm for an author talk/reading for my book, “Saving Ellen: A Memoir of Hope and Recovery.” I would love to see you there, but please register beforehand here. If the bookstore doesn’t collect at least 25 registrations in advance of the event, it will be “postponed” until God knows when. So please come, and let the store know ahead of time to expect you!