Inky actually attracted mockingbirds. While bluebirds were smart enough to stay away from Inky, mockingbirds, though nesting, say, 200 feet away, would see Inky as a threat to their young high up in the trees, become outraged, throw away that discretion which is the better part of valor, and start to aggressively buzz Inky and then zoom-in toward her like Stuka dive bombers lining up for a bombing run.
Inky, for her part, loved it when the mockingbirds harassed her.
The mockingbirds would fly in closer and closer and closer, while Inky sat as still as a stone in a photograph, pretending to studiously ignore then.
I've even seen Inky, as she strung the mockingbirds along, allow them to land on her head.
Finally, when she was certain that a particular attacking mockingbird was over-confident, she would spring-up and snatch the bird out of the air. So, our yard was constantly littered with mockingbird feathers.
Bad for the bird. Presumably, good for the species. Under Darwinian logic, the surviving mockingbirds would tend to be those genetically pre-wired to be more cautious around cats.
Our son Reid will have something strong to say about this in response. He thinks that semi-domestic cats are a disaster for wildlife -- that cats have no predators decimating their numbers in the urban landscape, while they decimate everything else.
However, even if that is so, cats on the loose are still a necessary evil. Their main quarry are rats and mice. Rats and mice who find ways into the walls of our homes have to be stopped. Traps and poisons just can't do the job, especially with rats. Not only are rats individually highly intelligent, but because they are an extremely social animal, they actually pass knowledge of what is dangerous in the landscape on to their family members. I have seen proof of this. If you put out a rat trap with peanut butter, you'll get a rat within 24 hours. But if you then put out a rat trap with peanut butter in the same vicinity again, every single time your next trapped animal won't be a rat. Every rat in the family suddenly associates the smell of peanut butter, and the rat trap shape, with death, and so stays away. And, no matter what, you don't want poisons around your property. Everything eats them. And because they are slow-acting, the animal does what, after eating the poison? It goes home and dies, and if home is inside the walls of your house, you'll find yourself wondering why your house smells like a dead body.
Okay. I'm ranting about cats and rats again.
One of the animals which mockingbirds aggressively attack is their distant cousin, the bluebird. Mockingbirds win the dogfights with bluebirds every single time, driving the bluebird parents away from the bluebirds' own nests full of newly-hatched chicks. I've seen the mockingbird-versus-bluebird dogfights again and again.
We came across bluebird nests with chicks orphaned by mockingbirds in the low-hanging branches of the oak tree we used to have on our property, in the vines on the fence, and in the grape vines to the left and right of our Jackson Avenue door. (Every time birds nest in the grape arbors at the door, we all go, "Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!" because we feel like we have a hospital nursery at our main door, and feel conscience-bound to go out only the back door to avoid disturbing nature.)
Now, one of the things we quickly discovered, with those orphaned bluebird babies, is that the Wives Tale analysis, to the effect that baby birds which haven't yet bonded with their parents bond with the first living thing they see, is essentially true.
When our boys were very young, we used to read to them the P.D. Eastman picture book, "Are You My Mother?," where this stupid baby bird searches everywhere or his mother.
Well, bluebird babies really do do that. And once they've bonded, its permanent.
So, one Saturday morning, when I went out to do the lawn, I heard birds peeping away on the pavement behind me, only to discover that a nest full of baby bluebirds, probably orphaned a day or two before by a mockingbird, were standing behind me, waiting to be fed! "Oh, no!" I thought. "They've bonded to me!"
If I moved forward, they happily hip-hopped after me.
If I went up the steps to the door, they followed me up the steps.
If I went into the house, they even followed me with the fearlessness of complete innocence into the house!
I called a vet, to gain insight into how to save their lives. The vet said, "Try mashing worms and feeding them with a toothpick. But you have to kind of feed them all day. They are far more work than a human baby. Good luck!" Click.
I tried. I honest-to-goodness tried really, really hard. I built a nest for them in a shoe box, which they loved. I went out and collected worms in the wet dirt beneath matted leaves, and prepared a live "worm-arium" -- a bucket of moist dirt filled with hundreds of live worms -- so that I did not have to filch-around in the dirt outside every feeding time, which was all of the time.
But, try as I might, the little ones started becoming listless, and began dropping-off, one by one. Whichever one of our boys took an interest at the time -- I forget who -- helped me with the traditional Catholic cigar box burial.
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