Exhibit A

Last year I spotted a pair of American goldfinches in my neighborhood.  They are beautiful birds with a lovely song, so I bought a special birdfeeder to try to entice them back this year.  I put up the birdfeeder in April and to my delight it worked, a pair of goldfinches started hanging around the feeder in May. I’ve been enjoying seeing them all year until yesterday when I saw them violently assaulting my gerbera daisies.

I have a large cattle trough on my deck filled with gerbera daisies that I wait very patiently to flower.  Sometimes it can take a few weeks between flower bursts, but I consider it worth it because I love their colors and how big the flowers are.  When they do flower, the flowers last quite a long time (two to three weeks).  Yesterday morning I was cleaning the kitchen and noticed the goldfinch pair that I usually see in front of my house at the feeder.  I stopped dead in my tracks in shock when I notcied what they were doing: hanging off the stems of the gerberas and dissecting brand new blossoms into tiny little pieces looking for seeds.

I didn’t know what to do–there was an ironic conflict going on in my head.  Finally I could stand seeing them pulling out petals no longer and went onto the deck and shooed them away.  Then I realized what must have happened.  Those little buggers were blackmailing me to fill up the bird feeder, which was running low.  So I’ve filled it hoping they will leave my flowers alone–but if they don’t, let’s just say I’m going to have to reevaluate our relationship.