And you thought I was an environmentalist

Update:  Onset of blogger’s cramp. Unable to write.
Update:  Blogger© spirals into a catastrophic 24 hour meltdown. Posting feature disabled.
Update:  Blogger’s cramp alleviated.  Suddenly want to write, but can’t. Figures.

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I’m not always the environmental activist that my family and husband think I am.

I’m passionate about saving the earth and doing my part, sure, but I can be just as lazy as the next person and quite often opt for shortcuts or make exceptions.

Example A:  I hated a holly tree so much that I actually cheered on the landscapers who came wielding chainsaws to cut it down. 

Had this holly tree minded its own business somewhere out in a forest or even in a side yard, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but no, it was inconveniently located right in the middle of our church parking lot. Which under normal circumstances, or with the right type of landscaping, might not have been a big deal, but our parking lot is super small and that tree has been begging for someone to back their car into it for years.

For this reason, I dread Sunday mornings - when the lot is full with a whopping ten cars - because inevitably we’re all playing a game of Russian roulette. “Which will I crash into today: the church building, the pastor’s car, or that stupid holly tree?”  So we sit there impatiently waiting for everyone to take their turn backing out using an awkward 12 point turn. 

Enter the chainsaws. I'm fairly certain these folks would kill me for saying so, but I was filled with pure joy when the sound of that spinning steel chain roared through the air - and you can bet your tootinany keister that I was front row and center chanting something like "Die, tree. Die!"

That is, until a bird came bolting out of the felled tree, followed shortly after by her nest of baby birds. I know I’m probably going to lose a few readers for writing this, but I hope you can believe me when I say that my stomach immediately wrenched and the only words I could utter for the next several hours were, "I'm a horrible environmentalist."  So please don’t send me hate mail.  I feel awful already.

To even further cement this conviction was that fact that on my drive home (and despite me slamming on the brakes, mind you) I destroyed yet another feathery life by colliding with a suicidal robin who wouldn’t fly out of the road. 

I’m realizing now as I type this that I have no clue how to avoid ending this post on a thoroughly depressing note.  So, instead I’ll show you these pictures of when I worked for the National Audubon Society and handled raptors (aka, birds of prey) as a last ditch attempt to assure you that I’m not some closet bird assassin, well not intentionally anyway.

See?  Jen + Birds = Friends 4Evr