Nature is amazing, isn’t she?
In the corner of the Garden is a little grave where Simba lies sleeping, since she took her soul up to the Great Cattery Heaven.
When she first departed, we marked where she lay with a simple but artificial red rose. We always say ‘hello’ to her, when we see her little place, but over time the rose became weathered and battered. It was replaced by another rose, but in time the same happened to that, and they vanished from the plot.
Recently, the corner of the Garden has just been bare, lawn-covered and bathed only in glorious sunshine.
Earlier today, two magpies were in the Garden, a mother and her baby. The baby was lying on the grass, watching her mother busying herself doing what magpie mothers do. She hopped in the sunshine, and walked in the shade. Back and to to the dry tub where we normally leave water for the birds and other creatures to drink.
I went out to fill the tub, and the magpies flew just a little further away to a safe distance. I watched them for a while, as they watched me, and then I returned back inside.
A short time later, I looked out of the window, and saw the baby magpie lying on the lawn in the corner, seemingly pecking on something on the ground above where Simba lay. What the baby was pecking at was red.
I waited for the birds to fly away again before I went out to investigate what was going on.
Can you imagine my surprise when I saw a red rose on the place where Simba is sleeping? It was one of the red artificial ones, which have been misled for quite a while. But for it to be in the very spot where it lay originally, apparently placed there by a baby magpie – well, that makes you think.
I don’t know if you remember Simba, there are a few photos of her dotted about throughout the blog… she was a gorgeous black and white cat with the friendliest of personalities. Black and white. The colour of magpies.
Like I say… Nature is amazing isn’t she? Full of Fabulous surprises.
(The picture that accompanies this post is a quick and wobbly digital doodah of a magpie. Or that’s what it’s meant to be anyway! I can’t recreate the beauty of the real thing.)
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