I have a black cat, a black and white cat and a grey long hair tabby (talk about fur balls.....yuck!)...she looks like a little bitty maine coon...and I believe they're all guardians of my home and symbols of domestic goodness. I love them so much!

Many evenings we sit in the garage with the garage door up and enjoy the evening sounds. It faces the East, so we don't get to enjoy the sunsets, but we've seen some incredible sunrises. Anyway, yesterday probably around 4 or 5p the hummers were entertaining us with quite an arial show. There is are hummingbird feeders on either side of the door. Suddenly 2 of them came together and fell to the ground. The grass is about 3 or 4 inches long so I could only see grass moving and an occasional wing. I assumed a pair was mating, although I'd been told that they mate in the air. We watched, but didn't go near....and before long the 2 flew away. It wasn't long after that when I noticed something moving in the same place....I couldn't stand it any longer....I went into stealth mode and sneaked over there...it was 2 male ruby throats duking it out like a couple of little boys on the school yard!!! Jeez....they are territorial and it's mating season to boot. I'm surprised they didn't skewer each other! One of them definately got the worst of it; when they flew apart again the smaller one went to a teeny branch and was a little shaken, but soon flew to the feeder and was fine. Those little things think they are huge. They're so precious and bring such joy. My mother found one in her garage years ago. It was lying on its side but she could see it was still alive. She mixed sugar water and saturated a q-tip with it and then she held the hummingbird in her hand to help warm it up. She placed the sugar water saturated q-tip near it's beak and pretty soon it began to eat. It regained body temperature and strength and flew off. She was thrilled to have such an experience!