Luxuriating in the dust

In her book A Window Over the Sink Peg Bracken writes of when she first looked through the window she had installed in her kitchen…

I was astonished at the way my mind took off in seven-league boots . . . . I was traveling eastward ho, across the ocean, past the Rockies and the small Idaho town where I was born, to the small Missouri town where I grew up, and to some other places where I may have grown up some more, though I'm not entirely sure about that

I sometimes wool-gather when I look through my kitchen window, but usually there are enough interesting things going on in the front yard to keep my attention firmly in the present...

A chipmunk full of nervous energy searches for sunflower seeds caught in the cracks of the wooden platform I feed birds on.

A turtle makes its way across the driveway, moving surprisingly fast for an animal that has a reputation for moving slowly.

Rabbits have created a dust bath in a sandy spot on the driveway. Two rabbits meet face to face near the public bath and creep cautiously toward each other. 

They touch noses and one sort of leaps away and they chase each other down the driveway.

A Brown Thrasher lands on the driveway and scurries over to the dust wallow and, as its name implies, begins to thrash around in the dusty place.

It behaves exactly like the birds that take a bath in the water I have provided in the birdbath a few feet away on the grass. It flaps its wings and spreads its tail and splashes in the fine dust. It lays down writhing and flinging the sand around with its beak, attempting to get the particles into its feathers.

The bird acts like it is in ecstasy.

It gets up, shakes itself, and runs across the driveway into the brush, and then a half-a-minute later it comes running back and does it again, and then finally flies off.

We’re often shown scenes in movies of beautiful women preparing to luxuriate in the perfect bath. They light candles, pour fragrant oil or bubble bath tub as it fills, and then lay back in the steaming water. I have to say that bird was enjoying its bath every bit as much, without all the extras.