Meanwhile, work, busier, busy, not so much. The days are lacking order, Tuesday is crazy - (7, 6, 5, 9, 2, 2, 3, 2, walk-ins), Wednesday, busy but less so, Friday largely dead.
Strange days.
Wednesday, the Hospital, Some tests of my heart (broken beyond repair but play the game); a 20 minute fast walk from the other end of town. So I am much better - not mended, but better.
***
Then there are the Crows. They - while I go hungry - are fed. One, watching it outside the building, playing with a paper coffee cup. The cup, empty, but the Crow is standing it on it's rim, pecking at the base, putting it on it's side, trying to balance on it, flipping it over and over, investigating...
It's curious to watch, but it's playing. Exploring the topography of a cup. And it picks it up and moves it and plays with it some more and it took me a while to realize that it's "Playing" - I'm too used to seeing the "Eating" rhythm, but this, this is different.
I flip them peanuts when I'm out, fill the pockets, I have to, there's 20 now and counting. Some have grown quite adept at catching peanuts on the wing, before they even hit the ground. I'm impressed. Others jump up and splay their wings to stop the flight and catch it, others joust it out, I'm pretty sure I could teach them to play soccer. I've bought little cupcake holders to hide the nuts I leave on the concrete bollards; I'm introducing them to "The Shell Game", they're going to have to work harder for their treats...
***
The pigeons mob you as soon as you show up. 40 of them, flapping in a great cloak of insolence and disease, trying to land on my knee, my shoulder, face, head....This is all a nope. Although the neighbour was in tears because she had managed to grab one, and it was allowing her to cuddle it to her meagre breast, "Playing along" as it were, although she has since been threatened with eviction if she keeps up feeding them...
***
And then there's the Seagull, a proper "booby" with his expression of idiocy, hanging out with the pigeons although he can't peck the millet and rice, and with the crows and he can't peck the peanuts. So he's properly confounded by the commotion that attends my visitations and cigarettes, by the murder of crows and the flock of pigeons descended, the pigeons - even when unfed, can find crow-crumbs of peanut and cashew, the Seagull can't, grabs instictively at the peanut only to discover it can't open it, the pigeons, they will surround the peanut, move away for the crow to open, then run it off when it's been cracked.
***
Which should catch me up. The news, not much, work - ever diminished, I need to find a lucrative 9-5:00 ASAP; bills mounting and I'm a little bit done with service. And next year I'd better have a Jeep.