The Story of Touch-Me-Not and the Hummingbird Named Ruby - Version 2

     It was in the early morning hour in the moments after dawn. It was before the woman with the polka-dot goulashes walked the grounds, tending and watering her unruly garden.  The woman who made way too much noise, throwing that whistling yellow ball back and forth to the teenage lab the color of a moonless night who ran all over the yard looking like he'd overdosed on caffeine while the old golden retriever who could barely walk, yawned.  It was then, in the quiet of the early morning hours out behind the barn that the Hummingbird named Ruby sought out her favorite blossom.  Jewelweed.  Raindrops sparkling like jewels after a rain.  That's where it gets it's name.  The tiny orange blossom in the shape of a cup was irresistible to pollinators like Ruby.  

    Ruby was a tiny ruby-throated hummingbird who had spent her first winter in Nicaragua last year.  She weighed about as much as a penny.  This was her charm's summer home, this yard in Maine. Her dad had a brilliantly colored crimson neck that glistened in the sun. His luminescent head feathers changed from green to blue.  She was more like her mom, well camouflaged in greens and browns that matched the forest that was her summer home.  

    It was late summer.  Jewelweed's flower pouches had fallen off here and there, leaving long slender seed pods behind.  As a doe silently ambled across the woman's yard, moving with the wind, Ruby spied a blossom.  It hanging plumb and ready, like a pendant on the neck of a graceful green stem.  She hovered just beyond the lip of the bloom and  pointed her slender beak deep within.  She searched for its nectar-filled spurs.  Her wings fluttered back and forth, like a little motor humming in the breeze and stirring up the morning air.   A loaded seed pod drooped nearby.  

    Bam!  The Jewelweed's dangling seed chamber exploded with a loud pop and into the air.   Seeds launched several feet and way over there.   Ruby frantically flapped her wings to back up and away.  

    From that day forward the tiny cornucopia-shaped plant that was the color of a setting sun was referred to as the Touch-Me-Not plant. 

    Ruby would not be touching that plant's seed pods any time soon.