Last night walking home from the beach with my older son Miles, we saw a male Downy woodpecker eating ants off the bark of a tree. With his red hat of feathers, he jackhammered his head into the bark; too busy eating to fly away as we gawked at him from inches away.
I was so excited and in a hushed hurried tone told Miles, “Oh I wish I had my camera! Last time I shot a picture of a female, she doesn’t have the read feathers on her head. And I posted it on my blog and you wouldn’t believe this, but more people have read that post that anything else! It’s amazing the traffic that a little post on a woodpecker gets!”
Miles looked at me in utter disgust and said “Mom, that’s awful. People don’t even come to your blog to read about you? They care more about a dumb woodpecker? That’s weak.”
I was about to challenge his scathing judgment on my reader’s lack of interest in me but I let it be.
Parents have to pick their battles with their children (and all children for that matter) very wisely.
And part of me thought, “Go right ahead, child. Believe that people think a woodpecker is more interesting than your mother.”
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Photo credit: Ohionature.com
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Thank you for reading my blog "Evanston Newbie", a project that I am using to tell stories about my new life in Evanston. You can also find my stories on Cowbird.com/LisaDegliantoni.
