By then, it was too late for netting and the only way to discourage more nests from being built was to hose down the sticky mud on the wall that had not become nests yet. Once built, we would be fined in the THOUSANDS of DOLLAR$$$$ PER NEST if destroyed. Though at times Tom sprayed down the overhang above our driveway as if he were going to war, truth be told, we didn’t have the energy - nor the heart - to do so frequently enough. Next thing we knew, dozens of nests were built at warp speed by the entire swarm of them in a single morning, and our house became a destination for the entire community to swallow-gaze at. So we caved (pun intended) and simply waved from inside our garage to passersby who felt sorry for us and our cute babies.
EIGHT MONTHS, tons of wasted California water, and nearly 200-nests-in-a-single-year later, we decided the swallow nets had to go up before the next mating season. It was not practical, nor healthy, to let this continue every year, and the kids need a place to do chalk art. However, it was the notion that we had to pay hundreds more for something we thought we had already paid for that made it difficult to stomach. Meanwhile, our neighbors down the street - who had their nets paid for by the rest of us - were no longer complaining about the handful of nests that landed on their house every season.
Don't get me wrong. We LOVE our neighbors, they are good people who probably never intended for us - the newbie first-time homeowners to live in the largest swallow dump of the neighborhood. However, in the process of everybody trying to take care of their respective houses, they "minded their own business" - for better or for worse - and so with mixed emotions, 自扫门前雪, 莫管他人瓦上霜 (zìsǎo ménqián xuě, mòguǎn tārén wǎshàng shuāng) came to mind. Or maybe this is what we, humans, get for building houses on the cliff swallows’ natural habitat in the first place? And so the plot thickens, yet the same proverb applies!
There’s a scene in Nomadland where a prominent character, Swankie, is kayaking by a cliff full of swallows’ nests, enraptured by these rare and beautiful tiny birds, as a soft melody hums in the background. Swankie, in that moment, felt at peace, levitated by a sense of freedom and serenity. In that same precise moment, my husband and I looked at each other and couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh at the irony of our ongoing, sometimes traumatic, experience with the same species of swallows.
Written: 2021-06-10
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