Posted October 19, 2008

This is the time of year when Southern Californians awake each morning, look out the window and say, "Blaphfurgle." This is because we are excited, having spent the entire summer waiting for the tourists to leave our mountains and beaches.

Now it's our turn to reclaim our great outdoors before December sets in and we have to face those awful, partly cloudy winter days when the thermometer rarely gets above 75. (No doubt about it, a Southern California winter is enough to make anybody stir crazy.)

Much as my wife and I would love to drive to the beach and lose ourselves in waves the color of rotting coffee, not to mention the germicidal qualities of agar, we can't. These days, our vacations consist of loading up the car and enjoying a slow, leisurely trip to the end of the driveway where, if we're lucky, we get to turn around and drive back up the driveway before my wife shrieks, "The hummingbirds are out of food."

Several years ago, my wife hung a pair of hummingbird feeders on the deck outside our bedroom. That year, we had six regular diners.

What we didn't know, and this is totally my fault for not reading the directions on the box, is that hummingbird feeders breed. We now have six feeders and a enough regular customers that, legally, we have to provide valet parking.

People think hummingbirds are amazing because of the way they can hover in mid-air, like dragonflies, but with a larger color palette. Don't believe it. Hummingbirds are perfectly ordinary creatures that obey a basic biological principle.

When in doubt, eat.

Fortunately for hummingbirds, they can eat anything, as long as it's sugar water. Sugar water occurs naturally in flowers. It also occurs in our kitchen, in quantities slightly smaller than the Sierra snow pack runoff. A day's worth of hummingbird food requires enough sugar to support a small plantation. Which we do every time we visit the supermarket.

Hummingbirds don't know this, apparently, because after a day draining both their hummingbird feeders and our bank account they don't leave so much as a thank you note. However, they do leave with a sugar rush the size of Concord, New Hampshire.

This explains everything.

My wife, who speaks to me in the few moments she has between hanging up feeders, washing feeders, filling feeders or boiling water (hummingbirds being well-known sugar water connoisseurs), believes hummingbirds use up so much energy flapping their wings that they must eat continually.

Not so.

Hummingbirds are not hungry. They are neurotic. They don't need feeders. They need detox. And, a nice spa with hummingbird masseuses and mineral water.

"We can't stop feeding them. They'll die," says my wife. "It's like genocide."

"That would get us to The Hague. The accommodations aren't much, but it is a trip out of state," I said.

Apparently, it never occurred to my wife that hummingbird are addicts. Get them off sugar and their co-dependency will go away, too.

So, here we are, my wife and I watching the hummingbirds while vacationing on our deck. Wait. We're not on our deck. That only feeds their neuroses. We're in our bedroom watching the hummingbirds through the window while remaining as still as mannequins with arthritis.

Ah, yes, there is nothing better than enjoying the great outdoors, even if you can't go outdoors to do it.

©2008 Jay Douglas