A Home Full of Friends

The bright blue jay poked its beak at the little nuthatches on the small birdfeeder, as the jay flew about in frenzied fashion. He was not quite reaching a position on the circular perch, but he continued flapping his wings, relentlessly stabbing at the three small birds.
One of the birds became intimidated and flew off, but the other two hung together, forming an alliance. One of the small birds had a crust of bread in its beak,which the jay succeeded in piercing out of it. So the crust fell to the porch, and the blue jay pursued it.
The Ottawa grandmother sat looking out her front window, not surprised at the jay's selfish conquest. She knew her birds. She knew the small ones brought her luck and home protection. But she eyed the jay with suspicion and judgment.
"Someone must be gossiping about me," she thought,"Otherwise, this thief would not be on my doorstep."
She looked up sorrowfully at the two little birds, "Ah, but it does not matter. These little ones offer me a circle of protection."
She watched the jay fly off with its stolen treasure.
"Good riddance," she said aloud, but then, she looked up at the small ones, who also looked back at her. "What ancestors are you?" she asked them.
She remembered when she'd been sick with a deep cough for quite some time, and that a flickerbird, among others, stopped to gaze into her bedroom window when she was finally on the mend. They all kept looking, earlier, with concern, and later, with compassion. They had a sense of triumph, expressing the victorious feeling of a doctor after a successful surgery.
Her calico cat jumped on the window sill to watch "cat t.v." for awhile. The grandmother put down some fine tuna, for she had a bond with both birds and this feline. If she fed it tuna, it would be less "tempted".
After scarfing down the tuna, the cat stopped watching its special performance and leaped onto her lap. He began to purr sleepily in its comfortable human bed.
The black and white fluffy dog came...tip...tip...tipping in from the kitchen, not to be outdone. She put her wet snout on the grandmother's lap with a whimper, its soft, brown eyes looking up at her, as she sat, her tail down on the carpet.
Two middle school children passed by. The grandmother heard them talking.
"Who lives there?"
"Oh, and old Indian woman. She lives alone. She's very strange."
"Why is she strange?"
"People get that way when they live alone, you know, no one to talk to."
The dog bounded to the front window and howled.
"That's okay, Cleo. School children don't know any better. I have many friends. They don't know I'm far from alone."
"Their idle talk has no power," she thought, and smiled peacefully.