Mary Lou Beattie

Susan Soderstrom

A Hudson's Hope Children's Bedtime Story

Thanks to all who helped me along the way, especially my daughter Cheryl, my friend Susan and my grandson Jesse who put everything together.

    Captain Dee’s voice boomed through the forest in the early morning hours. 

“All you chicks better listen up. We have a very scary problem here.”

    All of those one hundred or so chickadees all neatly lined up on the hydro wire had one thing on their minds this early in the morning. They were hungry and were looking forward to breakfast at the bird feeders.

    But Captain Dee had other plans and it had nothing to do with breakfast. He set up a meeting then and there to deal with the hawk problem.

    This year here at six mile there were two hawk families and about one hundred and fifty chickadees.

They were mostly the black capped birds with some brown ones. These were the boreal chickadees. There were about four nuthatches too. They were all very happy with their squirrel proof feeder filled with black oil sunflower seeds. 

    They had a big problem though and that was a hawk that visited too often.

    So the Captain told his flock that they had to be very careful when the hawks cruised around because the flock had already lost too many chicks.

    “We must come up with a plan dealing with this. We must talk these hawks into moving away from here so that our birds are safe. That owl we hired had to move away to help raise his family so we must find another way.”

    “So everyone put your thinking caps on and we will meet again in a week to share ideas. We must do our best to make this problem go away because nesting time is coming soon. Then the hawks will need twice as  much food for their chicks. We must act now!”

     “We will split up into groups of ten to exchange ideas and then meet again in a week. Good luck.”

     Chuck and Cheyenne were leaders in their group. Some came up with ideas such as tying bells on the birds legs to putting nets over the feeders. But these had been tried before and sadly none of them worked. One idea was to gather up lots of mice from the fields for the hawks but this was voted down. 

    Two days passed and no new ideas were found.

    Very early the next morning Chuck heard a crowing sound coming from the neighbors barnyard. He guessed that Roger the rooster had come back and he was so happy to be back with his hens that he was crowing and crowing till he tired out. It really did not bother the chickadees because it was far away.

    A light bulb moment happened to Chuck. He came up with a plan that he thought just might work. He told the group that those hawks hated roosters especially that really big one Roger. They had run-ins with him many times but Roger always won. 

    The hawks were so happy when he left the barnyard. Of course the small chickadees were much easier to catch. Now they would have to put up with Roger again.

    Chuck told his group the whole story and they all agreed to pay Roger a visit. So Chuck and Cheyenne went to see Roger and were warmly welcomed by Roger and all the hens.

    Chuck told them about the hawk trouble and how they were losing so many of their chicks to the hawks and asked Roger the rooster if they could hire him for a few days to help them. Roger was more than willing when Chuck and Cheyenne laid out their plan for him.

     The next day Captain Dee called the meeting to order. Chickadee after Chickadee presented plans about the hawks but all or most of them had already been tried and failed so many times.

    So when Chuck and Cheyenne’s turn came Captain said that it would be worth trying. Tomorrow the plan would be set in motion.

    Meanwhile the two hawk families were busy collecting all sizes of twigs and sticks to rebuild their nests in two nearby trees. The eggs would be laid in a few days.