Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Go Away, Bird

It is 5:26 AM as I sit in my dark, quiet kitchen with one light on, hot coffee still to sip beside me, a laptop in front of me to type out this essay.  Before sitting down, I slid open the door to the deck so my black dog, Lulu, could come and go as she pleased.

There is now one bird outside that door, chirping incredibly loudly.  There are a few other birds that make muffled sounds now and then, but this one is close.  And this one is loud.  It rarely stops.  It doesn't seem to need to breathe much.  It sings like my boys do--too loudly.  Clearly, the bird (just like my boys) is unaware of the subtleties between singing and yelling.

I can't figure out if I love it or hate it.

I love that I'm so close to nature, and one of her pets is so close to me, infusing my morning with cheerful chirps.  But I hate that my boys' bedrooms are next to this morning diva.  Both of them wake around 6 AM.  I'm guessing this often has something to do with the bird.

Just as an experiment, I walked out to the deck and looked for something to throw at the bird.  I'm still a nature-lover even if I try to scare off the one bird that seems determined to give me 45 minutes of writing time instead of two hours, right?  I found two large toy animals, the hard plastic sort, big enough to make a dent in some leaves, but small enough that I could launch them fairly well.

I sent the elephant charging towards this bird first.  There was a pause, and then the chirping resumed.  My feathered friend was probably laughing at me, incorporating insults into her song, a bird version of "nah nah nah nah nah…can't reach me!"

Damn.

Next, the tiger.  I aimed higher this time, directly to where the bird seems to be sitting and singing.  I launched its striped body with all my might and hit a bunch of leaves, but again only earned a pause.

Double damn.  Now I'm out of animals to throw.

At least I'm now certain: I hate it more than love it.  I won't tell my kids how I used their toys to scare off this bird.  They'll come up with their own theories on how the tiger and elephant traveled from the deck rail to the floor of the woods.

I know the truth: I battled an innocent little bird that was only trying to fill my morning with song.  And I lost.

It is 5:41 AM.  The first boy is now awake.

Damn bird.

Update: it's 5:52 AM.  The second boy is now awake.

4 comments:

Jennifer Laffin said...

I have this same battle with a tree frog that likes to sing outside our bedroom windows every morning. I love how you thought the bird was laughing at you. I often think the same thing about the frog. This was such a fun piece to read! I hope you find more writing time today, without disturbances from nature or your boys. :)
~Jennifer
Sweet Writing Life

Anonymous said...

What a great story, though I'm sad you have to live with this. Do you have a water pistol you could try?

KristiLynne said...

I feel that way about one of our cats that I love 23.5 hours a day. For some reason, he decides at about 4:00 am that it's time to meow very loudly for 10-20 minutes.

Tara said...

There is a woodpecker in the tree right by our window whose alarm is set at 4:45 a.m. - fine for the school year, but rather awful during the summer. I'm a nature lover, too...but....