Every house has its story. What's yours?

A couple of days ago I was strolling through a mega-market buying various tools and other odds and ends, and happened to pass by a bin full of nicely designed, small bird feeders.

How serendipitous, I thought. The idea of putting up a bird feeder outside my office window (I work from a separate building next to my main house) had flitted through my mind mere days before, inspired by the many small birds that themselves had frequently flitted around that space as though expecting to find something to eat there, and who had been inevitably disappointed. So I bought a bird feeder and a 10-pound bag of sunflower seeds.

I put it up and waited. Within minutes, word spread throughout the local bird community and the view from my office window became that of a whirling chaos of fluttering wings as dozens of feathered creatures representing three or four species of birds which are doubtless incredibly common over here, but which I could nonetheless not identify due to my pathetically inadequate knowledge of things avian, competed for the seeds.

By the end of a short workday, the damn thing was empty.

I filled it the next morning before beginning work, thinking most of the local birds must still be pretty stuffed from the Bacchanalian orgy of the day before, but nope. Instead they'd phoned distant friends and relatives and told them about their dazzling find. This time it took only half a day to empty the feeder.

Filled it again this morning, and as I write, at around three in the afternoon, it's running on empty. I was hoping for the occasional peaceful visit from a winged creature, not this Alfred Hitchcock-like swarm. Nor had I planned to become head waiter for a squawking cluster of never-sated customers. Oh, well. At least it gives me a reason to have my eyes involuntarily wrenched away from the computer screen every few seconds.

Now, however, when the birds have devoured the seeds like a demented pack of airborne Piranhas, and each new hopeful flaps away in dejection on discovering the feeder is empty, I feel guilty. What should I do? Buy a bigger feeder? Smaller seeds? A scarecrow?

I'll fill it again tomorrow and take a few pictures. That way, I'll be able to save something from the wreckage by deducting the seed.