Unique Serving Platter

My husband loves to hunt and fish. He trains hunting dogs, so he spends time hunting water fowl as well as upland game. He also likes hunting deer. When we had been married eight years he told me that he was going to apply for a permit to hunt black bear. The population of black bear is rising in our area so there were many permits that were available through lottery. My husbands name was drawn for a zone fairly close to our home. The day he received his license he said he was going to have to start target practicing. I did not think too much about his comment until I saw him take his bow and arrow set out of the closet. That is when he informed me that he had applied for an archery permit.

He has hunted with his bow and arrow for many years. I know that he is accurate and careful when hunting, but I did not like the odds of him sitting in a tree with a bow and arrow if there was a wounded bear on the ground. Assuring me that he would be safe hunting the bear with bow and arrow, he told me that he would need my help for two weeks prior to the season opening and also through the season. I needed to help him locate, purchase and distribute bear bait.

Bear hunting was a completely new concept to me. I had no idea that hunters carried food out into the woods for the bear to eat, in the hopes that the bear will come during the time you are sitting in a tree, close to the bait station. It made me even more nervous to find out that he was going to be sitting with a bow and arrow at a place that the bear is considering an easy meal location. My husband kept telling me that the bears were more afraid of him than he was of them. In mid-August we began supplying the bait station. We used day old bread and sweet rolls that we purchased from a bakery. We put out damaged fruit and vegetables from the produce department of a local grocery store. My husband also purchased a sweet molasses from the feed mill to pour on top of the bread.

It was fascinating to me to go to the bait station and see the amount of food that was being consumed. My husband still insisted that he was going to be safe using the bow and arrow. He had checked the regulations and found that you can have a firearm in your vehicle, in case you would need to kill a wounded bear. My concern was getting from the tree stand to the vehicle if there was a wounded bear.

The opening day of bear season my husband took his bow and arrow out to the tree stand he had put up. A friend of his went along and video taped the hunt from another tree stand. My husband did shoot a black bear with the bow and arrow and there was not a need for the firearm.

To this day, I can still remember the first time I ever saw a hummingbird. At first, I figured that I was seeing things. I wasn’t even sure if I should tell my parents or not. I stared at it for a while before it flew away. Later, as we walked on, my dad casually asked me “did you see that hummingbird?” Immediately, I wanted to know everything about that strange, magical flying creature. We got a book on hummingbirds and I read it from start to finish.

Although hummingbirds actually are native to the area that I lived in, they were pretty rare. I spent many afternoons in the backyard watching for hummingbirds, but they never came. Finally my mom suggested that we build a hummingbird house. I could not imagine anything more exciting than having a family of hummingbirds staying in my own backyard! We went out and got the hummingbird birdhouse kit that very day.

A hummingbird house is an extremely simple thing. Although designs vary, all hummingbird houses consist of a small platform for the hummingbird to build it’s nest on, some sort of shelter and some cotton or other soft material for the mother bird to build a nest. Getting the hummingbird to actually choose your house, however is another matter entirely. That hummingbird house sat vacant for a long time. I would watch it everyday, but there was never a hummingbird living in it.

No one had thought about getting a hummingbird bird feeder, but as soon as I found out that such things existed, I suggested it. By this point, my parents were a little bit tired of my obsession with hummingbirds, but they thought they’d give it a try anyway. The hummingbird feeder was an instant success. Although the hummingbird house continued to sit unoccupied for a while, soon we were seeing the birds feeding at the feeder every afternoon. It was only a matter of time until they discovered the birdhouse nearby.

I actually hadn’t checked on the hummingbird house in a while, but one afternoon I happened to peek in at it. To my surprise, there was a nest there! I watched from a distance and I was soon gratified to see the mother bird returning home after a day of feeding. There has been a family of hummingbirds living there ever since. To this day, I still get to visit them whenever I visit my parents at their home.