The Woodpecker . . .

Why do woodpeckers peck? They peck for a couple of reasons . . . to find sap in a tree (they are also called sapsuckers) and to find other sources of food . . . wood-boring ants and other pests that lay their eggs in trees, siding, and poles. Further, they also do what is known as drumming in the spring of the year as a means of their courting/mating ritual.

Woodpeckers can actually do considerable damage to buildings and trees, and they are not easily discouraged once they find an area they like. Several years back, I bought an apartment complex that was a foreclosure property in the lender’s inventory. It had been on the auction block a couple of times without any success. It was boarded up, abandoned, and mostly forgotten. I saw it listed on a bulletin board in the lender’s office. I went to look it over and made an offer . . . which was accepted, to my delight.

I scheduled my Architect, Ron Barbutti, to develop a rehabilitation plan and then sent some guys in to get started. There was much work to be done in removing the plywood that had been used to board up the buildings, and the removal of the old water heaters . . . some enterprising rascal had gone in the empty buildings at some point in the foreclosure process and used bolt cutters to remove all of the exposed copper tubing and flex lines. Moreover, the grounds required considerable clean up . . . we actually hauled something like 25 trailer loads of debris to the landfill. All during the clean-up / prep period, the guys got a chuckle over a woodpecker that worked on one of the buildings . . . he showed up several times each day and did his work. The guys made it a bit of a contest to run him off, but had no real success.

One of the major items in the Architect’s scope of the work was removal of the deteriorated siding, and replacing it with a cement fiber board known in the industry as Hardi lap siding. The existing siding was 4′ x 8′ sheets of a cheap particle-board composition which had been hung in the vertical fashion. Removal of the old siding proved to be a rather simple task as it was not very secure. Thus, each building was stripped clean rather quickly. As soon as the removal crew was finished with a side of a building, a second crew began the process of putting the new siding in place. The new siding was 8″ in width, with a 2-inch nail strip, thus leaving a 6″ reveal. Each strip was 12-feet in length, and was nailed up in the horizontal fashion. There was not much cutting required, so it was a rather fast process. The woodpecker did not make an appearance that first day of siding work . . . simply because there was too much activity on the building. However, the next day, he did return and started to do his work, but it was short lived . . . the concrete board was not something he wanted to peck on. Everyone on the job got a chuckle as we listened to him peck a few times, then stop, then try again, and then fly away. Each day he would return to peck for a while on a building that still had the old siding.

Once all of the old siding was replaced, the woodpecker moved on to an area that likely offered better pecking. Sometimes I still chuckle about that woodpecker and wonder whatever became of him.

It Seems to Me . . . that woodpecker’s experience was much like most of our own experiences. We find a good place to do our work, a place with more rewards than resistance, then over a period of time and a change of circumstances, we simply and quite naturally move on to something else. All things considered, it is actually a good thing that we do move on. It is likely a matter of the Lord advancing us . . . and our story.

I am certain that we can get stuck in a rut, and that can serve to interfere with a heathy, meaningful, and productive life . . . which merely becomes an unpleasant existence. Life was never meant to feel like a treadmill where we are busy but going nowhere. The Apostle Paul said, “I haven’t yet attained, but one thing I do is putting the past behind me and moving ahead to the prize set before me.” Philippians 3:13 – (Melton remix).

 

One thought on “The Woodpecker . . .

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.