Eviction Day is Getting Closer

My beloved sparrows are only days away from being forced from their nest...

A private contractor, who was hired by the Department of Corrections, has for the past year or so been busy chopping away at the outer cinder block walls of my living quarters, and other buildings on facility grounds, as well. Their job is to remove, by hand, every cinder block from all the housing areas, and replace the older slowly eroding blocks with new and more weather resilient, ones.

But my concern, however, is for the flock of friendly sparrows, whom for several years now have made for themselves a cozy nest within a collection of cracks and holes that has developed over time in the order cinder blocks. Their nest is several feet above my window and a few feet below the building's roof.

Since moving into my current cell, these resourceful birds have kept me company whenever they'd decide to perch themselves along the 6-inch ledge that's on the outside of my window. Every day, beginning at dawn, they will serenade me with an array of complex sounds and musical notes.

But, once the workers on scaffolds reach the area by my window, it will mean the end for the sparrow family. Their nest will be demolished.  Its contents carted away with the rest of the broken cinder blocks and chopped up pieces of concrete. It was nice knowing them. They will be missed.

D. B.