Feather your nest.

Two outdoor phenomena this weekend of note: My wife groomed the dogs on the porch, and once again a robin is building a nest under the deck. There may be a connection here.

Tralfaz, the large dog, is very hairy but has settled into more refined, mature hairiness. Nipper, the little guy, is just a fuzzbomb every day. It's the softest, sweetest hair and it is all over the house. If you come over and it's in your lasagna, trust me when I say we did everything to prevent that but it happens anyway. It's a force of nature.

Therefore, on Sunday it seemed to my wise Mrs. that it would be a good idea to give him (both of them, but mainly him) the Furminator treatment outside, where his tufts of hair could go wafting away and not clog up the vacuum cleaner brush for a change. And so she did, and a fine job of it she made, too.

When I was coming up the path later, I saw these tumbleweeds of puppy fur on the grass in front of the porch, and my first thought was What kind of weed is that? even though I knew what she'd been doing. It just made for a lot of ground cover.

How does this relate to Mrs. Robin in the back? As you know, birds will use a lot of found objects in their nest building. She used a big string of polypropylene twine as part of her nest, and it dangles down like a bell pull.

I suggested to my wife that the bird might be smart to use some of Nipper's puppy fuzz to make for a soft, warm egg-hatching environment.

Mrs. Key then wrote the dialogue for this endorsement:

NIPPER™ brand fuzz hatches eggs 43.7 % faster than other nest stuff!*
*Based on actual studies of actual birds by bird scientists.

Nipper would be thrilled to know he had helped foster new baby birds. He tries to catch and eat any birds he sees on the lawn. Hasn't caught one yet, fortunately.