This is a tale you may enjoy reading. It is not word-related, so I apologize.

This past Saturday I was preparing an anthem for our Sunday service. The music was rather difficult, so I spent the entire day working out difficult passages. About ten in the morning, I heard pecking outside the living room window and spotted a mockingbird tapping there. I assumed that the bird had seen its image and was simply pecking at it.

I returned to the piano and my work where I continued to hear intermittent tapping at the window that went on till noon when I got my camera and began snapping photographs of the mockingbird. When I went to the window, the bird would not leave. It looked at me, stopped its pecking, and would fly into a holly bush, but it would return as soon as I returned to the piano--and it would begin tapping on and off.

The mockingbird accompanied my playing until about 5:30 p.m.

The next morning (Sunday) when I warmed up at 6:30 a.m., the bird returned.

I didn't play again till Monday night. No bird.

But this morning with school being out, I began to work on the accompaniment for "The King and I," for which I'll be the high school accompanist, and the bird returned and began tapping.

This is a remarkable little bird. It either hates to death what I am playing--or it is perhaps trying to get at a foe--or perhaps it loves the sound of the piano.

Just thought you might like puzzling this one out with me.