Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Consistently wrong since 2002

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Republicans do not trust women.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Five by Five

Five by Five

by | 67 Comments

This post is in: 

I couldn’t wait to post this (sorry other FP posters) because A.) we live in a dystopian world of shit and B.) ALL BIRDS PRESENT AND ACCOUNTED FOR:

There were five eggs, and I see five little noggins, including the emo teen facing the back of the bus listening to Dashboard Confessional while worrying about worms.

I’m going to end up going to Lowe’s and buying a safety net, aren’t I?

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  1. 1.

    jl

    I missed a birdie crisis of some kind? Glad everything is SNAFU Colepacetic again.
    Thnx for chixpix.

  3. 3.

    Arclite

    So kind of you to raise fresh food for Steve. He will be so grateful that he’ll knead his claws on your chest for an entire 30 minutes after dinner.

  5. 5.

    patrick II

    I am surprised you haven’t bought a safety net already. I have been worrying about them every time you post a picture. If you hurry up and go now I promise I will try and post a wise, insightful comment someday.

  7. 7.

    The Moar You Know

    I’m going to end up going to Lowe’s and buying a safety net, aren’t I?

    Yep.

    When I was seven, I found a nest of recently hatched – in retrospect, REALLY recently hatched, nothing but down – baby birds fallen on the sidewalk. Took them home, of course. My dad was going to put them down. I gave him a screaming lecture on morality and he threw up his hands and looked at my mom and said “handle this”. You don’t let baby animals die, you help them. I’ve been “difficult” ever since then about that.

    So we did. Heating pad, mixed formula, I fed them every waking moment. Lotta work! Gotta recognize the bird parents. Three of the four survived. Then I had to take them outside and let them go, which was a whole other lesson in itself. I knew I absolutely had to and surely didn’t want to, but they were flying in the room we’d been raising them in and it was time. The last one sat for a moment and looked at me, looked at the field, looked at me and then flew off.

    Totally heartbroken, totally worth it.

  10. 10.

    jl

    I need to sign up for the mobile app Cole pet alert system.
    I didn’t know any kind of access control had been imposed upon Steve.
    Didn’t know anything about the maladjusted tweener chicky crisis, whatever it was.

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    Do mom and dad bird still get mad at you for hovering over their young’uns?

  12. 12.

    Mart

    A great quality critter photo from Cole! I have a pair of robins who keep building nests in my deck framing. Critters keep tossing the nests to the ground with pretty blue egg shells broken. The boy robin sees himself in a window and repeatedly attacks the image banging into the window for hours. I put paper over the window, but once it weathers down he will go back at it, shitting all over the deck. Kind of hoping they find another home one of these years.

  15. 15.

    maya

    Why buy a safety net when you have all those dog beds and comfy chairs you could place under nest?

  17. 17.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @John Cole: Just remember – when they are big enough, they fall/drop out of the nest and are on the ground for a few days before they figure out how to fly. Depending on the species, mom and dad will often ignore their cries/screams so they understand they have to learn to survive on their own. This is the time to protect them from critters, but also don’t enable them. LOL

  20. 20.

    Aleta

    safety net and a couple of motion detector sprinklers, one of them to protect the air space
    (I’m not serious)

  21. 21.

    Betty Cracker

    It would be awesome to have a nest cam, but I’m thinking one can’t be installed now without disrupting the critters. Maybe next year!

  22. 22.

    The Dangerman

    I don’t know if I shared this around here already, but for a cool bird save story, Google “Nellie The Night Heron”. I met her; she was royalty around these parts for a while.

    ETA: Story may not be up any more. Add Pismo or Shell Beach to your search if you are really interested.

  23. 23.

    VeniceRiley

    Thanks to whomever tipped the penzeys.com deal in the prior thread (15 more minutes, people!) I got my order in and was able to tell my sister and she did too.
    woo!

  25. 25.

    jimmiraybob

    I may be wrong but what i sense that they might want are worms and grubs. Possibly prechewed and placed into their beaks. If I were a baby bird…….

  28. 28.

    arrieve

    This is the kind of Friday news dump I can get behind. Have we ever figured out the species, or are we going to wait until they grow up enough to tell us?

  29. 29.

    p.a.

    Will the blogmeister be in emotional crisis mode when the birds fledge? Is Steve under 24/7 watch so they don’t become StevieSnacks? Do we know the species yet? What’s the odds that JGC starts hand-feeding them?
    I love these summer replacement series: much better than reruns.

  30. 30.

    No Drought No More

    I’ve pretty well concluded that if God pays us any mind at all, She does so much as we enjoy and take pleasure in looking at birds. That is, without much heed to the generations before or after.

  33. 33.

    jl

    The CW is that these chicks are some kind of finch(?) that looks scruffy but has a nice song, that also is easily mistaken for a sparrow. I think that is more or less correct, but some kind commenter expert could please remind us?

    But, this is Cole, so the horrible truth is they are really the first modern Quetzalcoatlus family to fly into civilization from a long lost prehistoric mystery island. They’ll grow to the height of a three story building, eat Cole’s house and carry him off to the island. I guarantee it. We need to watch carefully for the bleg on how to get off the prehistoric island.

  36. 36.

    TenguPhule

    @John Cole:

    These are on the front porch and he does not have access to that.

    John, you’re a cat owner. You should know better then that.

  38. 38.

    TenguPhule

    Woop Ditty Scoop Poop
    @Johngcole
    “What Happened to All the Ice Cream: the Autobiography of John Cole”

    Solid Gold.

  39. 39.

    FlyingToaster

    @John Cole: She’s a local. Her brother Aaron was a town councillor up to January.

    I have to wait to start WarriorGirl on BTVS; I’m trying to decide if the summer before middle school is too young (note: almost certainly).

    Best-o-luck with your finches. DON’T INSTALL A NET. They need to learn to fly.

  41. 41.

    debbie

    @BruceFromOhio:

    I think the whacky weather has messed with biological clocks. Last night, I saw several surprisingly tiny bunnies hopping about. They were small enough, they could hide in a mown lawn.

  42. 42.

    Mike J

    Very torn. Got a haircut but usual cutter was out. Leaving the shop probably not as good as the other one, but tomorrow they”ll look the same, but home->haircut->home was 20 minutes. Very fast, no talking, bing bang boom. Wish it was always like that.

    And Faith is the best slayer.

  43. 43.

    Aleta

    @jl: We need to watch carefully for the bleg on how to get off the prehistoric island.

    It will be sad because there is no escape. And we will keep sending money to a scammer who feeds us one line after another. About rescue efforts that almost worked.

  44. 44.

    Skepticat

    I’m going to end up going to Lowe’s and buying a safety net, aren’t I?

    That depends. Does Lowe’s have bird palaces and tiny Tempurpedic mattresses?

  45. 45.

    JPL

    Mentioned this before but Finch the mutt ate the house finches eggs. Sad! Last year a snake got them, so hopefully the bird will wise up and not come back next year.

  47. 47.

    J R in WV

    @TenguPhule:

    John, you’re a cat owner servant. You should know better then that.

    FTFY

    You don’t have cat, Cat has you. Cole is Cat Servant, 24/7, except when taking care of ill dog !!!

  49. 49.

    JPL

    @Betty Cracker: Woods Hole had a live feed to an osprey nest and, they had to remove it after a few seasons. The mother bird was somehow related to Susan Smith because she was beyond abusive. She’d either peck the birds or just force them off the nest to die. The viewers were in an uproar and wanted them to kill the mother, which is really not allowed. Nature can be cruel.

  50. 50.

    mad citizen

    @The Moar You Know: Oh my, you lived one of the most touching Andy Griffith episodes when Opie raised the three birds after killing the mother with his slingshot. Winkin’ Blinkin’ and Nod. An all-time classic.

  51. 51.

    Trinity

    Has he bought the safety net yet? I assume he is doing that right now…as he should be!

    They’re so damned adorable.

  53. 53.

    Fair Economist

    @JPL: There was another bird nest feed in a reserve near Mount San Jacinto in CA (IIRC) where one year the camera recorded, in loving detail, a snake eating all the nestlings. The bird fans watching were horrified and called in to have it stopped, to which the biologists at the reserve replied “snakes have to eat too”.

  54. 54.

    ET

    @EBT: Just so you know every time I see you pop up I get confused because those are my initials…..

  56. 56.

    SFBayAreaGal

    It’s so great to see BTVS fans. Loved the show and I loved Faith in both Buffy and Angel.

  59. 59.

    NotMax

    Fell through a wormhole connected to B-J front page six months from now:

    Goddamn birds keep trying to fly into the windows and that little bastard Thurston will not stop barking at them.

    :)

  60. 60.

    Shell

    This is the time to protect them from critters, but also don’t enable them. LOL

    Remember those posts from B. Cracker of the grown bird (blue jay?) that kept harassing his parents for food?

  61. 61.

    Mnemosyne

    I have to admit “five by five” made me think of the shuttle pilot in Aliens. But I was never a big fan of Faith.

  63. 63.

    Alex

    @Mart: We had the same problem with imprudent robins under our back porch where our dogs and the neighbor’s cat kept eating the fledglings. We put up some plastic bird spikes to keep them out of there. So they nested on a shelf 4 feet off the ground. We put up a big bobblehead owl, and they finally moved to a tree in the front yard. Meanwhile, though, a bunch of sparrows have used the bird spikes to support their multigenerational colony. They disdain the bobblehead owl and poop on the barrage balloons. Yesterday, about a cubic foot of nest fell down, and the dogs thought it was Christmas. I’m trying to decide if I should block off all that part with hardware cloth or just let nature take its course with the remaining sparrows (which are an invasive species).

  64. 64.

    joel hanes

    @Alex:

    When birds do not experience predation, their ability to fly may decline over the generations.
    This is the process that produced the dodo from a pigeon.

    Predators shape species and ecosystems.

  65. 65.

    Mel

    Yes, you are. A baby safety net is a good thing, as long as it is one with a bird safe mesh so that Momma and Poppa birds don’t get entangled.

  66. 66.

    Joeg

    Couple of those bird babies have their badass look down real good.

    JC – the last sentence and the emo quip made me LOL irl.

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