Bird altar

I'm not much of a carpenter but I'm a wannabe. I like to use old fashioned hand tools. Not as fast but I don't cut my fingers off. So when we moved to our new home in the boonies I was itching to build something. My wife, away on a business trip, fed birds in our old house. On arriving, I erected her feeders on a hill where we could watch them from the side porch. It was adjacent to a wooded area and a thicket of berry bushes. We immediately attracted scores of finches, jays, cardinals, mourning doves, chicadees, even some bluebirds. I thought I would surprise her with a feeding table, similar to one I had seen in a bird book. In an hour I had completed the project. I nailed it to a wooden stake left by the builders on the property line. I sat down with my binoculars that evening to observe the feeding frenzy I was confident would ensue. Nary a bird went near my creation. But that wasn't the worst of it. I didn't need magnification to see that I had erected, not a bird feeder, but a crucifix. The much too narrow feeding tray made a perfect cross on the upright. It resembled a gravesite...as if I had killed my absent wife and planted her on the hill. I have nothing against religious symbols but I am Jewish and this edifice made me somewhat uneasy. Hastily, I pulled down the cross, widening the feedtray. After re-erection I added dead branches and brush to disguise the base. Still no avian takers, though a chipmonk showed some interest.

My wife returned the next day and questioned why I had built an altar on the property. My son thought it resembled the preparation for a Klan meeting. That night I removed my masterpiece and relegated it to the scrapheap. "Must be Jewish birds" I lamented to the chipmonk.
"La chaim" I thought I heard him reply.