Rusty Saber: Cardinal rule: with beauties come beasts

If I were to claim hundreds of dependents to whom I am the sole provider of food, what would be the response of the Internal Revenue Service? (What "service" does the IRS perform when all it does is separate us from our revenue?)

As soon as the folks at the IRS finished laughing, they would probably send the FBI to arrest me.

Truth be told, I do have hundreds of dependents looking to me for their daily food and water. If they eat elsewhere, I don't know when they do it; they seem to be with me always. Some live in my backyard, others just hang out waiting for me to feed them. I can't go away for even a day because there would be no one to tend to my "dependents." It's a round-the-clock commitment.

In my backyard are five bird-feeding stations and a birdbath. Every day, hundreds of birds of all sorts come to my diner for food and drink and reside in my hotel in backyard trees. They are never far away from food.

Besides feathered friends, fuzzy friends squirrels and chipmunks are guests in my hotel and eat at my diner. The chipmunks don't eat much, but they are almost too cute for their own good; my dogs think they are so cute that they want to dispatch them to chipmunk heaven. I wouldn't like it if they were to get their paws and jaws on one.

The squirrels eat a lot. They raid the feeders, eating me out of house and home. I'm not certain where squirrels are on the animal intelligence spectrum, but if not in the genius range, they must be close. I have bought all sorts of so-called "squirrel-proof" feeders. Who-ever designed these gadgets forgot to test them on the squirrels; they always seem to short circuit every anti-squirrel feeder I have used.

I once had a finch feeder that was squirrel-proof because the holes were too small for squirrels to get at the feed, causing one irritated critter to completely destroy the feeder. What the heck, if you can't beat em, join em: Squirrels are part of the environment, they have to eat to survive. They can have their share.

My dogs, however, don't adhere to my live-and-let-live policy. They believe their sole purpose in life is to rid the backyard of squirrels and chipmunks. The dogs get plenty of exercise chasing both. Luckily they haven't caught a chipmunk, but they have managed to catch two squirrels, causing both to check out of the hotel and diner on the spot.

Fuzzy interloping critters not-withstanding, the diversity of birds furnishes constant delight. A cornucopia of nature's best are on view as they go about the natural process of eating, establishing territory, mating, raising their young and, yes, fighting among themselves.

Of the world's most beautiful birds, one would have to visit faraway exotic places to find any as beautiful as Missouri's native cardinals. The red of the male is dazzling; the less brilliant, but equally beautiful coloration of the female makes watching a pair of them well worth the hassle of tending the feeders.

Although I no longer have the aforementioned finch feeder, all manner of finches come to dine on sunflower seeds. Like the cardinals, they are so pretty and delicate that watching them is a joy. Because one of the feeders contains suet, two different kinds of woodpeckers spend the day close to their preferred food source.

I even enjoy watching the so-called common sparrows; they may lack bright coloring, but they are entertaining and they are far from common. In fact, identifying sparrows is fairly complex: My bird book lists 21 varieties of sparrows, several of which come calling in my backyard.

As any backyard bird-feeding enthusiast will attest, it's well nigh impossible to attract only the pretty, sweet and gentle birds. Grackles, starlings and cowbirds come in droves. They are neither lovely, sweet nor gentle. If they were human, they would be the rowdy thugs who take over places where people gather for fun.

These birds are noisy, messy, slovenly hooligans who bully and drive away smaller and weaker ones. There isn't much that can be done about them. Like squirrels, they have to eat.

Shirttail philosopher that I am, my philosophy is that you have to put up with a lot of rowdy grackles in order to watch a male cardinal gingerly feed a sunflower seed to his mate. It just doesn't get any better than that.

(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University and a Springfield public relations consultant.)