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Much to our enjoyment, birds flit around and feed in our backyard. Recently a very young woodpecker was loitering near a bird feeder suspended from a tree branch. He caught my eye as he sat on the branch above the feeder and watched smaller birds eating.

The feeder is a tall plastic tube filled with seeds and surrounded by a wire cage to keep large birds and squirrels away. Smaller birds go right through the wire easily and perch inside to feed from one of several holes in the tube. However, larger birds, like an adult woodpecker or blue jay, must stretch their long necks through the cage to reach the feed.

The young woodpecker apparently thought he could get inside the wire cage to eat just like the smaller birds he had been watching. However, he quickly discovered he couldn’t slip inside the cage. Perplexed, he began climbing the vertical rope that connected the feeder to the tree branch. I watched in amazement. Why doesn’t he simply fly to the branch instead of grabbing the rope with his bill and attempting to pull himself up to the branch?

Suddenly he lost his grip and slid down the rope to the top of the feeder. Convinced he wasn’t old enough or bright enough to figure out how to reach the seeds in the feeder, I returned to my work.

A few minutes later I glanced out the window at the feeder and burst out laughing. Not only had the young woodpecker gotten inside the wire, but he was sitting on the bottom of the wire cage with his tail feathers tucked under him. Apparently, he had grasped the feed tube with his feet and wings and slid down like a fireman sliding down a pole. He even hit the bottom right in front of one of the feeding holes. There he sat on his tail feathers, hugging the plastic tube and eating to his heart’s content.

I chuckled. “You’re really a determined hungry baby, aren’t you?”

As I laughed at the spectacle, I wondered, Could I look as ridiculous to God when I “tightly grasp” something I think I simply must have?