avian squatters.

These little guys are currently costing me $5 a day.

We rented a huge dumpster for our long-overdue major spring cleaning and attic junk culling. It costs a flat amount up front that includes the fee for dumping all the trash, and then $5 per day for every day we keep the dumpster beyond the included 5-day period.

I hauled a bunch of old furniture out onto the porch before the dumpster arrived so I’d be able to just take everything apart and chuck it into the dumpster. Right after they delivered the unit, we found that a robin had built its nest on one of the furniture piles sheltered underneath the overhang from the porch roof. There were little blue eggs in there, which turned into the little fuzzy birds you see in the picture above. I can’t remove the furniture until the wee ones have flown the nest because I don’t want to displace them, which would kill the baby robins. So the meter on the dumpster is running. On the other hand, it gives me a good excuse to take my time with the cleaning of the attic, which is handy because right now my priority is finishing Frontlines #4 anyway.

Here’s the parental unit, collecting protein for the kids in our backyard:

Like Dr. Jeff Goldblum said in that Mostly Cretaceous Park movie—“Life will find a way.”