My cherry tree has, after a long hiatus, borne fruit. Three years I’ve waited for cherries, since the last crop of any significance. According to the University’s Cooperative Extension, a goldmine of botanical knowledge, it’s been a crummy period for the precious fruits until now.

But now I have CHERRIES, one of my very favorite foods, and I am loath to share, especially with the nasty, pestilent little birds that covet my fruit. I pay a squad of common jays a weekly protection fee of raw peanuts, and this helps a bit, as the bigger jays fend off the swarm of feathered locusts that otherwise known as finches and sparrows. The jays have gone from looking rather scruffy when they first arrived, to hale and hearty warriors of the trees, thanks no doubt to a steady diet. I’m not above employing hired muscle to safeguard my beloved cherries. I suspect that the jays might be pilfering the occasional red globe now and again, but I suppose even the most tightfisted mob boss allows his thugs to skim just a bit here and there, as long as they don’t get uppity or greedy about it. As long as they terrify or injure the little pests, I’m happy. I’m hoping the jays will grow a lot bigger under my patronage, so that I can send them forth against some of the smaller neighborhood children that like to tramp unbidden through my front yard.

Last year, in eager anticipation of a crop that never came. I put up bird netting, half of which is still on the tree. I was going to take it down this year, but then I found that what was left still deterred the vile little thieves. Now it’s not only a physical barrier, but a psychological one as well; it’s my own little backyard warning effigy. The upper half of a bird is tangled within the net, no doubt having been relieved of its lower half by one of the neighborhood cats who shits in my flower garden and front lawn- about which I will, perhaps, weave a later tale. I’m sure the rest of the small birds don’t pay it any mind, but I like to imagine it’s the avian equivalent of sticking a head on a pike as a warning to all who would approach: Stay The Hell Away.

By the time I found the chunk o’ bird, it was already dried out, the ants having already had their fun with it. Since it isn’t rotting or nasty-smelling, I decided to leave it up as the aforementioned token of barbarism, a brutal token warning of violence and death to trespassers, in an otherwise placid suburban neighborhood. Next is either a cat head, or the noggin of one of those little flower-stomping kneebiters that infest my surroundings. It depends on how big the jays get.