Me=General McClellan; Robins=President Lincoln

Just a quick note to clarify the title of this post: Abraham Lincoln was famously quoted as saying about his general "If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a time."

You'll understand what I'm getting at shortly.

So about a week ago I was finally feeling up to par following my trip to the D.R. and my subsequent intestinal distress. I decided it would be a good day for a bike ride, my first in just under a year. So I went to the barn, where my bike hangs from two hooks to get it out of the way during the winter months. As I poked my head into the barn, I heard a rapid fluttering of wings headed toward the big garage doors. A quick glance told me it was a robin. It's not uncommon at all for birds to nest in our barn, especially phoebes. As a matter of fact, we've had nesting phoebes in our barn every year I can remember since we moved here. But a robin was somewhat unexpected, and I began looking around for why the bird was there.I saw nothing out of the ordinary, so I went to my bike to take it down. As I freed the rear wheel from the ceiling hook, I realized where the bird had come from:

At the time there was only one lonely blue egg in the nest, but yesterday when I finally got around to chronicling this event, there were four lovely eggs:


They had apparently attempted to build a nest on the bike hanging next to mine, but found my front cluster more to their liking. So, essentially, the birds said to me "if you're not going to use that bike, do you mind if we do?" As much as I'd love to take my bike for a ride, it's pretty cool to see these birds using it for their own purpose.