He and his wrens are doing a little traveling in N.C.
By Bonnie Edwards
Published in News on August 6, 2006 2:05 AM
Some of Danny and Patty Barwick's nieces and nephews are special.
They were raised in the chassis of Danny's gas truck, and they have feathers.
And these little ones have spent quite a bit of time traveling.
A mother wren recently chose Danny's truck as the perfect spot to build her nest.
He had met the little bird before -- she used to use an old hen's nest where Danny kept his tools.
"She'd usually make her nest right on top of the nails in there," he said.
They grew fast, those birds, and when they were chirping loudly and would fly out into the shelter, Danny said he would give them a ride back to nature.
"I'd put them under my hat and take them to the yard, and they'd go right on then," he said.
Danny did not know the mother bird had moved her nest until one day when he was delivering LP gas to a customer in Snow Hill.
"I hear birds," Danny said the woman said.
That was the beginning of a whole lot of wren-sitting for the Barwicks -- and more than a few questions. It isn't every day that your deliveryman's gas truck chirps.
"Everywhere I'd go, people would want to know where my birds were," Danny said. "They were hard to see, but from what I coud tell, there were three in there."
The three little ones kept Barwick entertained throughout the day, chirping along any time he would stop the truck to deliver gas for Seven Springs Supply. As soon as he would make noise with the reel, which he uses to pump gas, they would start chirping.
The birds would also chime in when he would pull out the chocks to keep his truck from rolling.
"It's a wonder some of them didn't fall off," Patty said.
But they didn't, even when Danny would go across several railroad tracks in the LaGrange area.
And every night when Danny came home, the mother wren would wait for him to park his truck -- and then she would perch on the back.
"When I got out of the truck, she'd go under there and feed them," he said.
"They'd chirp all day long until she fed them, and then they'd get quiet. When I'd leave in the morning, sometimes I saw the mama. They were quiet when I went out to the truck. They've done a lot of traveling, got around a lot before they ever flew."
Patty said it is no wonder the little wrens were so chirpy during her husband's 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday.
"Don't you know those babies were hungry him being gone all day like that?" she said.
Patty said the wren must be a modern mother, content with trundling her little ones off to day care while she went about the business of her day.
"She didn't swarm after him for taking her babies off," she said.
Patty said the mother wren obviously thought Danny was a pretty good "chick-sitter."
Or, maybe she was thinking of her children's futures.
"Maybe she decided she wanted them to be travelers," Patty said.