Close Encounters with Wild Animals (kind of)

Um, major OMG happening here right now.

Let me backtrack to a month ago. I planted some bulbs (some kind of flower - I forget) and herbs in pots on my fire escape.

A couple weeks later the bulbs and dill started to sprout, but the lavender and sweet basil and whatever else I forgot I planted wasn't making any sort of appearance. I also noticed that in one of my large pots the dirt was stirred up. I thought I might just be imagining things, but then I saw sprinkles of dirt all over the bottom of my fire escape. My next thought-because I am a paranoid person-was that a robber had come to my window and stepped in the pot while he was trying to peer in. Then I switched the robber out of that scenario and replaced it with a cat - which makes a lot more sense considering all the feral cats in our backyard. I told my friend about my findings and she suggested that maybe the old Polish lady next door had dug up my bulbs. I actually took this into consideration, which is ridiculous, but I honestly couldn't figure it out.

So tonight I'm rearranging some things on my fire escape and I see that one of the other pots is also stirred up! I lean out the window and this is what I saw:


How insane is that?! A robin's egg! The poor robin must have been plucking little sticks out of the pot for its nest and eating my seeds! I really can't think of anything cuter, but I feel sad for the baby robin that will never be. I wonder what I should do about the egg....

This is a view of my backyard. I'm pretty proud of it because before I cleaned it up it was just a junk pile. Right now it is "in progress" and waiting for me to lay down grass seed. In the summer it gets kind of wild with vines and these weed trees, but this year I planted tons of flower bulbs (Abe got them for me for free - like hundreds of them!). AND - I have about 6 gardenia shrubs that Abe got for me - for free! I don't know if they'll agree with our climate, but it's better then them getting tossed in the garbage, which was their destiny before Abe saved them. I also have a holly shrub that is growing pretty quickly. The shrubs are key because they will block the view of the Chinese restaurant's back door (it is located in the ground floor of our building, but luckily they are pretty clean).