three little birds, pitch by my doorstep

 Literally.  It was just like the Bob Marley song.  A momma cardinal laid three little eggs in a hanging basket just three feet from our back door.  I'm not sure how we even knew the eggs were there, but they hatched just two days after we noticed the eggs.  I tried to chronicle each day with them, but missed two days.  So these photos, in consecutive order, mark each day of their growth.

 Check out the difference in their wings from day to day!  It's crazy!  They look prehistoric.

 Tom and I had grand plans for how to protect the babies from the dogs once they were ready to fly.  We were going to fashion some kind of net (a sheet) under the nest so they wouldn't fall and then get rushed by the dogs when they race out the back door.  I had no clue what the nest time was for a baby cardinal.  In hind sight I should have looked it up.  But I had no idea it was less than two weeks!  One morning I went out to check on them and they were just gone.  It scared me half to death because I had gotten ridiculously attached to the little boogers. 

I need to quick tell you, I am pretty freakin' scared of birds.  I would NEVER have one as a pet.  My friend Kathy has two that live in, I swear, like refrigerator size cages and they scare the crap out of me every time I am at her house.  Every time they squawk I think I lose a year off my life.  But how can you be afraid of these tiny, precious things?

So I was pretty devastated when I went out there and they were gone.  Vanished.  No sign of them anywhere.  I was terrified that maybe the dogs had gotten them on the early morning trip outside where I grudgingly walk to the door with my eyes still shut in a desperate attempt to not wake up enough so that I can crawl back into bed for an hour or more of sleep.  But Tom assured me that there would be "signs" if the dogs had gotten them.  If you think otherwise DO NOT tell me!  I looked all over the yard, in the trees.  Nothing.  So, my hope is that they are off making nests of their own, scaring the bajeezus out of some other bird fearing person, happy as little clams.