Bugging You From San Juan Island

My daughter, Amanda gave me my birthday present today…about a whole month early!  Not complaining here at all though…I LOVE it!  This is what I worked on this evening to incorporate into my Wildlife Management Plan I have to write for my graduate class.  It was a perfect evening to stay indoors and doodle and with this headache I’ve had for about 4 days and counting now, everything rhymes, so I wrote a poem to go with my picture.  Enjoy!

There was a bird dressed in feathers of blue

That sang in the morn when the day was new

It feasted on insects

that ate the weeds

or pollinated flowers

so they’d have seeds

~

But that day they sprayed

The weeds all died

The insects went hungry

And the bluebirds tried

~

To find food for their young

But there was none to be had

They searched high and low

But the outcome was bad.

~

The foodchain was altered

With herbicide

The insects left

And the baby birds died.

~

The birds of blue

Didn’t come the next year

For fear that their food

Would all disappear.

~

Improving the prairie

Is a very good goal

But the point here to learn

Is that all things have a role

~

To play in the food web

They all interact

Survival of species

Depends on that fact.

***Text and photographs copyright 2011 by Cynthia Brast.  No part of this story may be reproduced in any form without the expressed written consent of the author.