How to Disturb a Bird Nest: A Tender True Love Story

My husband has a truck with a trailer on it that sits next to the garage. He loves this truck. He said he would keep it as long as he lives. He used to run in demolition derbies and still has illusions of doing this in the future. He has dozens of trophies that he has won at the Elkhart County Fair. He believes that he was a carnie in a past life. (Only kidding.) You know how I get off track.

This truck has sat here for some time. He is a very giving person and will pick up any unfortunate person's car that needs his help. He hasn't needed to do this for a while so his truck sits there smiling, basking in the sun with not much else to do but look important. I am glad that the neighbors pretty much view it as a pet.

The old truck has served another purpose lately. While riding by on the lawn mower one day I noticed that some not very bright mama robin built a nest on the top of the back tire, barely visible, hidden by the fender. That was probably what my groundhog was so interested in when he would sneak across the street into our driveway in the evenings.

My husband needed to move the truck to use it to haul something away the other day and was puzzled on how to do this without disturbing a nest of baby robins sitting on his back tire. My son also has a truck, which is bright red, my husband's is gray. Said son decided to take a shop rag and move the nest into the bed of his truck. He proudly showed me the featherless baby birds sitting vulnerably in the nest. I was sickened by what their future was going to be and went into the house. My husband moved his truck out and my son put his truck in the same place that the giant birdhouse had been sitting in. The truck being the birdhouse.

I was a little miffed knowing that the mama bird would not come back to the nest. My son tenderly put the nest back onto his truck tire and left it as undisturbed as possible. Low and behold, mama bird came back and within a week we saw her teaching her little baby birds how to fly. They all survived unscathed.

I love that my husband is a loving caring man, and that he has taught our son to be the same. Can't say that much about his war games that he likes to play or the potato guns that he has built, but he is a good loving young man and I love that about both of them.