Hummingbird feeder

Last week I wrote about the rare New Mexican boa constricter and backside-biting velociraptor-ants. Perhaps I overemphasized the peril of my situation.

Bright and beautiful. 

So regular readers (hello Mom!) may be relieved to know that not all local fauna is bent on my destruction. In fact, there is one creature round these parts with good intentions towards me: hummingbirds.

And it's hummingbird season, though not for long.

Merely walnut-sized, hummingbirds are decked out in more sequins than the Milky Way. They dance gracefully, dangerously, at a million miles an hour with the agility of of insects and the artistry of birds.

Best of all, they are generous. All you have to do to get them dancing in front of your window is to put a little sugar water out for them. Though not magpies, they are major suckers for bright, shiny red feeders.

Creatures great and small. 

Ana and I refill the feeders every few days. She and the hummers have something in common: a sweet tooth. We brew 'hummingbird tea' for the feeders together. She pours whatever is leftover into a porcelain cup for herself.

She drinks delicately from the porcelain cup until her patience for such niceties runs out. Then she lifts the entire saucepan to her lips to get every last drop of sugar water, licking the rim of the pot to be sure.

I suspect my Ana may have been an actual hummingbird in a past life. My evidence is this:

1. A profound desire to eat sugar. 
2. A talent for getting sugar out of her gullible mother. 
3. A love of bright things.
4. A generous spirit. 
5. An ability to buzz around me at a gabillion miles per millisecond. 

I will miss the hummingbirds when they dance quietly away into autumn. And Ana will surely miss licking hummingbird tea from pots.