Mama Bird...Gracie Bird?

Yesterday was a gorgeous Pittsburgh day....the sun was shining, the birds were chirping and Gracie was outside all day on the gazebo floor. Hold up...did I say she was OUTSIDE, on the FLOOR? This is weird for 2 reasons:

1. Gracie is a princess; she doesn't really "do" outside. She much prefers to be in the air conditioned house.
2. Gracie doesn't lay on the ground, ever. Not even on plush carpeted floors...she's always on furniture. So if she is outside, she can always be found on our padded gazebo chairs.

So she's out there all day, we figure something came over her & she was getting in touch with her inner dog, rather than pretending to be a human. Then in the evening, she starts scratching and digging at the floor boards of the gazebo...ah-ha! Baby birds! Their nest was directly under the floor boards of the gazebo....they were chirping with their little beaks in the air. Adorable, right? It was great until we realized that Gracie thought she was the Mama Bird. Which explains why she didn't move from that spot all day long.

All was well & adorable....until the real mama bird tried to swoop in to feed the birds....Gracie jumped OUT of the gazebo at the mama. Gracie is small....the drop off the gazebo was at least 3 or 4 feet...thankfully, aside from yipping when she hit the ground, she was ok. Ok enough to get right back up & return to her post!

We had to drag her away after that, the poor "real" mama bird was sitting on our fence with a disgusting amount of worms dangling out of her mouth waiting to feed her babies. We didn't want Gracie to be attacked by the bird, or harm herself with another flying leap.

Here's a shot of the baby birds (after the mom was able to get in & feed them, they went to sleep...it was probably a traumatic day having what appeared to be a fluffy, white ogre hanging over their house all day) and a shot of Gracie with "her babies".