Momma Robin's Morning (if you dare read)

My dining room features a sixteen-foot-long window, offering us a backyard nature viewing at every meal. Yesterday morning, as I gathered remnants of the hot oatmeal breakfast we'd enjoyed, I noticed a robin land right under the window.

Not moving a muscle, I watched.

Digging her beak into the soggy grass, she swiftly pulled out a squirrelly worm, about the size of a baby snake.

How do they always know precisely where to place their beaks?  They score worms faster than I score handfuls of chocolate chips!  From my secret place.

The inhabitants here might smell my poison, but they never see it.

 "I think I smell chocolate, Mommy.  Are you eating some?"

Surely, I mused, Momma Robin won't manage to take flight with that snakish thing in her beak?

She pecked it, grabbed it and swung it around.  Then dropped it.   Three or four times, she repeated the process.

Is she slowly killing it?  Wanting it to stay still, I wondered?

Finally, the worm's nervous system gave out.

Next, Momma Robin pecked at it furiously, tearing it into small morsels.

Oh, dear.

Disgusting!

I shivered.

The baby robins, nestled in a maple tree by our window, waited for Momma.

She did her morning duty, just like I do.  Breakfast morsels prepared for hungry babies.  Faithfully.  Systematically.

In the end, I didn't know for whom I should feel sorry.  The worm.  Or the babies?

At any rate, you won't find me grumbling about my morning duties tomorrow.  (Not that I ever do that.  I never wake up at 6:00 a.m. feeling cranky.  Not me.)

Now I know.

Momma Robin, my kindred spirit?

She has it far worse.