This summer season, my strawberry patch put out tons of flowers which would eventually become strawberries.

I watered the plants and watched the flowers fall off to expose small buds. In another week I saw that the buds had turned into small, green berries. Yay! In another couple of weeks we’d have luscious read berries.

Then the berries turned red. I checked them once each day to determine when they’d be ripe enough to harvest. Kept watering the plants and pulling up weeds that tried to crowd out the strawberry plants.

Finally the day arrived that some of the strawberries became ripe enough to pick. But I discovered to my chagrin that another creature also wanted my ripe strawberries: the robins.

While I sat on my back deck enjoying the cool evenings, here came the female robin. She’d land on the fence and turn her head from side to side to scope out the most delectable berries, and to  watch me. The she’d swoop down and try to peck off a berry. I ran toward my strawberry patch, yelling and waving my arms to drive her off.

This happened each evening. Sometimes the male robin would try to get at the strawberries. He was less frightened of me and took longer to drive off. Also, he was persistent, coming back every two or three minutes to try again.

In the end, I did get to enjoy most of the ripe strawberries. But the robins—when I wasn’t looking—also got their share, darn them!