nature part two

i recently bought a basil plant for the scant times i use it to cook. it was getting annoying to pony up the two dollars every time i needed a few leaves of the stuff so i figured i should just invest in one whole plant, which had many many leaves. as an added plus they are also very toxic to mosquitoes, so maybe then we could throw open our balcony door without fear of getting bit. a long time ago i grew bok choy in our backyard, not for food but for fun. they grew to about three feet tall, but when we returned from a week long vacation, they had all dried and shriveled.

the basil plant seemed fine out on the balcony and i left it there last week, happily looking up recipes to make fresh pesto, making plans to buy pine nuts. it dawned on me about twenty minutes ago that i should check it out, because it had been sunny and well, i need lots of water to survive, perhaps basil did as well. as you can imagine, it too, like the bok choy had dried up and shriveled. i expected that. what i didn't expect was the dead bird lying next to the plant.

i'm not sure how the bird died. one of my favorite shows is monk and i crouched down to look at the dead bird and i tried to do that hand thing that monk does but the best i could come up with is that the bird flew into our window and snapped its neck, or that the bird ate the basil which is deadly to birds.

our next plan of action is how to dispose of the bird. california state is very into warding off west nile virus (which is fair) and we're supposed to report the bird death for the powers that be to determine whether this is a bird eligible for further west nile testing. part of the form requires that you put in what type of bird it is, but i can't really tell and i kinda don't want to look that closely to find out. i kind of want to just put it in a garbage bag and throw it away, but i also want to be a good citizen and good golly what if there is a bout of west nile going around and this bird was the catalyst to a county wide spread? catastrophe!

okay that made me feel bad so now i'm going to study the bird and see what type it is. wish me luck.