BY GERALD S. HAWKINS

BY GERALD S. HAWKINS

Rappahannock Neva Contributn* Writer

I was having a quiet cup of tea in the farmhouse parlor as my wife, Julia, told me how a pair of bluebirds had taken to the nesting box we had installed on the weathervane post. The post was fixed to the steel pipe of the wellhead, to keep it out of the way of snakes and other predators.

The bluebirds had successfully fought off two stray sparrows for possession of this safe, rainproof home. Now, with spring in the air, they had been flying in and out of the entrance hole with straw and twigs.

I had never seen a bluebird until I came to Rappahannock. I remember the words of the World War II song “. . . There’ll be bluebirds over/the white cliffs of Dover. . .” but the song wasn’t true. Dover has cliff swallows and plenty of seagulls, but nothing as pretty as the sky-blue, Eastern bluebird.

Just as Julia was telling me about the nest, I heard the control to the water pump click on in the utility room, but it didn’t click off. That was strange, because no one was drawing water. With a farm water system, one is sensitive to any sign of things going wrong. Were the geese pecking at the wire to the controls —preciously the gander had pecked through the wire to the rainfall indicator, putting it out of action for a week — or had the well run dry, or had the main pipe sprung a leak?

I went outside. A quick check showed no damage to the controls. The geese were away from the wires, over in the flower bed. The trouble was we were getting no water into the tank in the house, even though the pump was running flat ef&t.

I telephoned the plumber. As my luck would have it, the hunting season was on.

"He’s out turkey shooting,” his wife said, “— I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“It’s an emergency!” I told her.

“Can’t you fix it yourself?” she replied.

I slowly hung up the phone. My grandfather Hawkins was a respected water engineer, and he had kept the water supply running in a small town in England through 50 years of frost and drought. Her voice was a direct challenge. I did not know anything about pumps and plastic pipes, but, for the sake of England and the memory of my grandfather, I had to do something.

The water supply was my big problem, but the bluebirds’ nest was another. Those bluebirds had chosen the wrong place and the wrong time. The weathervane, post and box were on the wellhead. Post, bird box and nest would have to come