I was just thinking...

Nature never ceases to amaze and wonder me. Most people probably go about the busy schedules and never really take a look around, or stop to "smell the flowers."

I have to admit that for a period in my life I was the same way. That changed after my wife and I began homeschooling our children, when we began to look for more creative ways to teach them about the world around them, I began to pay more attention.

We didn't want to just bore the children with "sit down and learn this "kind of classes, so we opted on learning through interaction and the use of teachable moments. As a result we have gone on countless adventures exploring nature and discovering how things work.

Our children are much older now but the habit of paying attention to nature has stuck with me. Especially since we have moved back to the midwest. There is always something new going on in my back yard. Whether it's the rabbits showing up every morning to eat my new grass seed...or the bird that follows me around trying to take a shower as I water the lawn or the squirrel that likes to come up to my back door and look through the glass as if to see what's going on inside...whatever the case it's always interesting.

So in the tradition of looking around and taking it all in I was out working in my yard last week and I noticed a new bird nest in one of my trees. It caught my eye because I saw something shining and glimmering from one of the branches. The bird had built it's nest with a piece of shiny ribbon which was blowing in the breeze. My wife and I were joking that the poppa bird had added a little extra decoration for Mother's Day.

A few days later when all of the bad weather hit I wondered about the cute little nest. The winds were really ripping through the trees in our yard and even caused a few of the branches to break


(a few of the broken branches)

The entire time the wind was blowing I was thinking about that bird's nest, so when the weather cleared up and I was back out in the yard I went to check on it. I was surprised to see that the bird nest was perfectly in tact.

My wife asked me why I was surprised, and after talking with her I realized that it is rare that you see a bird nest get destroyed, in fact you can often see branches that have been ripped from trees and you will see the bird nest still attached to the detached limb perfectly fine.

The whole thing had us joking and wondering why little birds and animals can produce sturdy, solid construction and people can't after all we are supposed to be smarter than animals right. Since our conversation I have not only wondered about that but also why is it that animals seem to at least try to scout out the best or safest spot to build..and people will build in danger zones and then act shocked when something happens and there home is destroyed...for example your house gets destroyed by a tornado 5 times and each time you rebuild it the same way in the exact same spot, tornado number six comes along and guess what your house gets destroyed again...what do you think the person does...does he rebuild in the same spot or does he find a location that tornadoes are allergic to? If you guessed that he found a different spot you are wrong, the guy builds in the same spot and for the 7th time plays a game of twister with the tornado and loses...and now he is surprised when the insurance companies don't want to offer him any insurance on his home...yep we are definitely smarter than the animals (pause) not!



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