new pet.

let me begin with a little backstory.  last year, when we went to st. thomas on vacation, we arrived home to chaos in all sorts of ways.  one of the more minor bits of chaos (or so we thought) was a pile of brambles in our mailbox.  we noticed it and just thought it was yet another random fiasco and that maybe the neighbors had had a few too many and thought it would be funny to fill our mailbox with twigs and leaves (stranger things have happened, right?)...SO...justin took our mailbox off the wall (we have the box kind that is right by the door) and dumped out the trash into the yard.  much to our dismay, three small birds' eggs came out along with the trash that we now realized was a nest.  we were so sad!  i know it's not really our fault and all that, but we are animal lovers over here and it was just heartbreaking to squelch these little lives before they'd even had a chance - and just because we were annoyed at the general shambles of our house.

anyway.  flash forward to a week or two ago and a bunch of crap started to slowly appear in our mailbox again.  this time, we knew what it was.  we weren't sure if the bird was just scoping out real estate or if this was the beginnings of its real nest, but we just let it be.  last monday, i discovered an egg!  so, i wrote a note to the postman and by tuesday morning there were 3 eggs!

it's been a week now, and justin and i fuss over this poor bird and her eggs like mother hens.  it feels like we are being redeemed from our sad destruction last year.  she is a house wren, we're pretty sure, and she is little and precious and protective of her little eggs.  she lays on them all night and flies in and out throughout the day, probably gathering food and whatnot.  we read that the eggs take 13-15 days to hatch, so we are anxiously anticipating what we might see this weekend....