Fruits of Love's labors--some lost

I haven't raised the white flag, but I've conceded victory to the robins, at least on the cherry front. In the strawberry theater, it's a different story. The birds have definitely won the great cherry-tree pick-off war this year.

Oh, I suppose I still could go out there and grab half a dozen more ripe cherries, but my heart's not in it after all the lame efforts I've made for the past week. In my frustration, I've decided that there's got to be a more humane and effective way to keep the birds out of the Garden of Eatin' Cherries than tree netting.

First, I could never direct the damn stuff where I wanted. Working with tree netting is even worse than trying to untangle fish line. Hoping to save this year's cherry crop, I used the ladder and a long piece of plastic pipe to get the netting as high on the tree as possible, but it's a tall tree, and the netting kept falling off the pipe and landing on the ground. After three attempts at trying to block off the tree from robins, I ruined a large number of cherries and managed to cover only half the tree. Rationalizing, I figured that having part of the tree covered might put out a good bluff, and they'd stay away.

Well, that was presumption at its best. Robins are not as dumb as I made them out to be. They know how to change directions and find the openings where they can cruise in for a quick landing, pick out only the ripest juiciest cherries, grab a bite and launch off to complete safety from the netting. In some cases, I even saw some take the whole cherry, fly over into the barnyard, touch down, drop the fruit to the ground and peck away at it without worry of a quick escape from the forbidden tree.

The trouble with netting is that it doesn't scare off robins, but it does a number on the little finches. So far, on two different trips to the tree, I've completely removed two of the three drapes of netting in an effort to free a finch. I found both birds, fortunately still alive, hanging with their beaks pointed toward the ground. When a finch gets caught in the netting, a finch will generally stay caught cuz its tiny body can get completely wrapped up in dozens of hair-thin threads within seconds of getting caught and struggling vigorously to escape.

In both cases, I walked the bird and several feet of netting to the house, grabbed the scissors, held the little bird tight and methodically snipped each thread that had unmercifully wrapped around neck, legs, wings and any other available body part. In both cases, I took the little bird far from cat view, set it down and let it fly off.

After the second such incident, I announced to Bill that the robins could have the cherries this year because that netting was just downright inhumane. I'm not a PETA-type person, by any means, but I just think that's an unfair advantage in the great competition of human vs. bird at the cherry tree. My cherry count is pretty low, but I like finches and believe they deserve better odds.

On the strawberry front, life is good. The score so far is Marianne, two-plus gallons-- robins, maybe four berries, if they're lucky. Now, that's where the netting works very effectively. Finches don't tend to touch down in strawberry patches, while robins just have to settle for digging worms in the nearby lawn and making dirty faces while watching me pick my berries. I don't feel one bit bad because their cherry consumption more than makes up for it.

Bill and I have topped off several evenings during the last couple of weeks with fresh strawberry sundaes, and no bird has had to suffer bodily harm in the process. I'm hoping to find a way next year to outwit the robins at the cherry tree. For now, I just have to look at all those polished cherry pits in the general vicinity of the tree and think about agony of defeat and a year with no homegrown cherries.