Standing at my kitchen sink, I could see that the hummingbird feeder hanging out on my deck was empty. A pang of “uh-oh” went through me as I realized I wasn’t sure how long it had been that way. I quickly went outside, retrieved the feeder, and refilled it with the special red sugar-water mixture.
To hang it back up, I have to stand on tippy-toes and “lasso” the hook on the eaves with the wire on the feeder. Sometimes it takes a couple tries. Like five or six. So there I was, balancing precariously on my toes, stretching out my right arm to reach as high as I can, hoping to snag the hook without dumping the red sugar water all over myself.
I heard a low whirring sound, and a hummingbird appeared out of nowhere and dived right at me. A second one came from another direction. Buzz-buzz-buzz. There were only two of them, but boy were they quick! I felt like I was King Kong on the Empire State Building, and the little birds were the dive-bombing airplanes.
Unlike King Kong, I resisted the urge to slap the hyper little sugar-addicts away. Instead I hollered, “Patience is a virtue!” and scampered back inside, still with the feeder in my hand. From the “safety” of the kitchen, I planned my next sojourn onto the deck.
I learned two important lessons that day. One: Impatience is not limited to humans. And two: God invented stepstools for a reason.