Mouse Redux

Remember grade school when someone told you that “So-and-so likes you.”?  Suddenly, old “so-and-so” got better looking.    You will remember that Mouse the House Grouse and I are an item, and that he has equal but opposite feelings for Jon.  In fact, I thought I heard Mouse hollar “Moriarty” in January when he was flying combat missions against Jon (who was on the roof shovelling snow, bless his heart).  So there were great lamentations when, two days ago, my beloved walked in and said, “I’m afraid you no longer have a grouse;  he attacked the windshield head on as I was driving in.  He must have broken his neck”  To his credit, despite feeling a little unnerved by the collision, Jon felt sorry for my loss;  that is not to say he didn’t search for the corpse to harvest the plumage for fly-tying.  But Mouse’s cold body was nowhere to be found.  I searched carefully but finally concluded that my grouse had crawled off to die in private. 

So when Super Grouse strolled towards me the next day, burbling his Selectric murmur, I was overjoyed.  He said that the reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated and that it would take more than an SUV to out-compete a grouse in love.  Then he flew up into a cedar and waited for me to throw out handfuls of shelled sunflower seeds.  An hour later, he parked himself in the driveway so that I couldn’t drive away.  Once again under his spell, I catch myself thinking Mouse is even better looking than he was in the fall.  I hope he’s thinking the same about me.

In the absence of a painting of Mouse, here is a cardinal I saw last year.  He was already married.

"The Mister" 8x8 oil