Cardinal Cadet

Not quite so red as is a full-fledged male, I think, but pretty red, and seeming slightly small, he hopped along the horizontal brace that held the bottom of the downward sloping square of screen, one section of the mansard frame above the pool.

The screen enclosure serves two purposes and theoretically a third: the first because a pool is deemed a nuisance in the law of tort, an attractive nuisance: luring children to their doom with its prospect of most pleasant play unsupervised until the chlorinated water fills their little lungs; the second to avoid the constant task of taking leaves and other flotsam from the surface of the water; the third to be a compromise between imperviosity and freely flowing air and light: but that would then allow full access by mosquitoes, flies, and stinging insects; snakes, iguanas, alligators—and of course, the birds—to the users of the pool. The screen keeps out, in many cases, six of seven, but tiny stinging insects still abound. At least they bound on me, and bite. No-see-ums.

All of which, I’m sure, was of tiny interest to the little cardinal hopping, singing, looking longingly upon the pool, first with right eye, then with left, as he considered how best to break what must have seemed to him a tough tight tangle of tenacious twigs. He leaned down and leaned back up, sang a bit, then hopped, and looked, and sang a bit. A distant cardinal answered, or perhaps just sang in parallel, but the red cadet upon my screen seemed unmoved by that challenge or acknowledgement, as he continued hopping, singing, looking, tracking back to keep the pool in view.

What led him to desist surveillance is unclear, at least to me, but suddenly he fluttered down and lit upon the stucco-covered half-wall where he sang a song of what I must imagine was a boast of victory, after which he turned and hopped down out of sight and though I waited many minutes sang no more for my ears. I think he made a story of a mystery he could not solve. I did, too.