Steve hates the noisy black crows that fly through our neighborhood most late afternoons and early evenings, often terrorizing smaller birds. He will sit at the bistro table in our front garden and fantasize about ways to kill them. Like, a water cannon. And so I knew that hanging some black bird effigies on our front door would appeal to him.
A digression about wreaths. My mother grew up believing that wreaths should be hung only to signify that there has been a death in the family, and that the body is still laid out in the house. Presumably when the hearse comes to take the body away, the wreath will be taken to decorate the church and, finally, the grave. Thus for me, hanging a wreath has that added frisson of childish rebellion.
So I went to our local Dollar Tree store and looked at all the items of Halloween decor. The black birds were tossed together in a big box on a bottom shelf along with other black things: unreal fluffy black owls, black plastic rats, and spiders of all sizes. I sorted through everything in the box and placed all the realistic crow-like black birds in my shopping cart -- then sorted those by shape and condition. Some had outstretched wings, while some held their wings close to their bodies. I selected four of each.
Dollar Tree was not stocking any styrofoam wreath forms, but Steve was quick to adapt a wire coat hanger, and seemed to enjoy stabbing it through the birds. We alternated the two bird shapes and added large black beads in between. An orange velvet ribbon set the whole thing off nicely, but I decided to forgo the dusting of black glitter.
If this wreath lasts until Halloween I'll be surprised, but I think its therapeutic value has been fully realized already.
