Hummingbird Encounter

This isn't a cooking blog, did I mention that? Probably a lot of posts will talk about my adventures TRYING to cook, since I'm focusing on that a little right now, but my intent here is not a cooking blog. Besides, following my cooking advice could be hazardous to your health ;) The aforementioned CSA Kitchen Misadventures will be posted soon, but in the meantime, here's a fun little story.

I have a hummingbird feeder in my backyard that, to my knowledge, has not really had many visitors in the month or two that it has been hanging up. The liquid inside it did disappear over time though, so I assumed that either it was being used by sneaky hummingbirds while I wasn't looking, or that it was evaporating. Regardless, it was empty and I wanted to fill it up again.

On my lunch break today I got one of my tall dining room chairs (not many ladder-ish options in my house) and climbed up to take it down. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that it would have some leftover liquid in it, so I rather unceremoniously spilled sticky, red sugar water all over my chair, my jeans and in my hair (I was standing in kind of a weird way to reach the feeder). I climbed back down and surveyed the damage. Sigh.

I took the feeder in to the sink and spent about 10 minutes try to rinse it out thoroughly. One of the little holes was very stubborn, so eventually I figured out how to take it fully apart and realized what a mess it was inside. A spider had crawled inside it and made a web that had then gotten sticky and wet from the sugar water, so it took a surprising amount of cleaning to fix it up. Finally satisfied, I put it all back together, dried it, and poured the refill of red sugar water in, and promptly spilled more red sugar water all over the sink because the feeder wasn't closed correctly. I fixed that and thought it was still leaking, so I left it sitting in the sink as a test while I went back outside to start cleaning up the chair.

I got out the hose and was about to spray down the chair when all of a sudden a beautiful green hummingbird flew down to my eye level, about 2 feet away from my face, and hovered there for a good 20 seconds or so making direct eye contact with me! He (she?) looked like this guy pictured below:

Image Credit Flickr User GJJ ML

I assume that I smelled of sugar water and my bright red hair (we're talking unnatural, dyed, fire-engine red here folks) was pretty attractive to him. I was so surprised that I'm pretty sure I said, "Oh, hi!" out loud. I imagine our conversation to have gone like this:

Me: Oh, hi!

HB: Hello. I'm a little confused, you do not seem to be of the food persuasion after all. 

Me: Um, well no.

HB: Well, while I have your attention anyway, let's have a little chat.

Me: Ok.

HB: So there used to be this food thing here, I liked that a lot.

Me: Ok.

HB: Can that come back?

Me: Why yes, yes it can. In fact I was just working on it now, that's why I'm doused in sugar water.

HB: Great! I'll be back later then, holla!

And he took off. It was fun while it lasted though! I hosed down the chair, checked the feeder, which seemed to be fine by that point, and hung it back up outside. Did my little hummingbird friend immediately return to say thank you? No. I'm sure I'll see him again soon though!