Every wildlife photographer has read about such instances in nature; I'm talking about those instances that change our perception of the Walt Disney PBS image of what some people hope nature and wildlife is going to be.  Things happen out in the real world of nature that will at times be quite distasteful.  So, consequently we tend to avoid those times when nature doesn't sit well on our Bugs Bunny image of animals.

    After fifteen years of living in the Wind River Canyon I was naively confident that I had seen it all before.  This summer I could open a window and photograph the House Wrens without the young Wrens even knowing I was observing  their behavior; it is the perfect set-up for many thousands of enjoyable frames that usually lasts a couple of months in early summer.  

     The female Wren finishes her nest with soft material from around the nearby creek, but it is obvious to an experienced eye that she is a young mother-to-be; the mating pair are not as fanatical at watching the nest as other more experienced birds I have seen in the past, including another Wren house on the other side of my property occupied by an older female.

     While the young House Wren couple was away from their nest for too long yet again, there arrived an old female Wren that began checking out the birdhouse and giving it a once over that looked very odd.  She peered into the "doorway" but kept her lookout in a very quick and unusual manner that was very strange indeed.    The Wren then poked her head out of the opening, but she had an egg in her beak!

    This mature female Wren from the other side of the property didn't just drop the egg; no, she threw it out! and watched it fall, then shot out of the Wren house like the season's owners would never do.  I was absolutely stunned for a second; I couldn't believe what I had just seen.  Standing there for an eternity I finally ran out the back door of my cabin to search for the egg, and found it in a few minutes of careful searching.  I held the tiny egg in my hand and looked up at the wren birdhouse and wondered, "Should I put this miniature egg back into the birdhouse?  What should I do with it?    

    Then it hit me, "Everything I need to know I learned from Star Trek."  I know how this sounds like the Big Bang Theory, but I swear this is how I worked out this weird incident from Mother Nature.  I'm here to observe animal behavior, not change it to my own idea of morality.

     Think about it for a moment right now; doesn't the "Prime Directive" apply here as well?  I really did want to put the beautiful little egg back into the nest, but that would be interfering in something that was not any of my business.  I didn't like what I felt I had to do; no, this is none of my business, "don't interfere!"  And I hated myself for knowing that I had to walk away with that pretty little egg in my hand, but I could not, under any circumstance, put the egg back; I would be a human making decisions about what other beings should be behaving like; this was not really my choice to interfere. 

    The beautiful little egg now sits on the curved tail of a small pewter mouse that sits on the kitchen window sill within site of the Wren's birdhouse.  But wait, there is the "rest of the story."  The young occupants came back, and spent an inordinate amount of time looking around, and yes it bothered me.  But things turned out all right after all, the young House Wrens had four perfect little babies of their very own weeks later.  But it was only much later when I was checking my camera back did I learn that a half century of training paid off handsomely; I had the pictures of a killer in my 16 gigabit CF chip!  Captain Kirk would have been proud of me. The Egg & I-#1House Wren tossing an egg out of another birdhouse! The Egg & I-#2House Wren watching the egg fall that she threw out of another nest!