The Food Chain of Haters

I am a little concerned for the birds who inhabit the trees outside my building. This isn’t the kind of concern I had for the singing birds who lived outside my bedroom window when I shared an apartment with my brother. That kind of concern stemmed more from my desire to kill every last one of them and my fear that even if I managed to peg them all with my brother’s gun, there was some endless supply of night-singing devil birds that would swoop in and take their place. I spent months shoving various ear plugs down my ear canal in the vain hope that it would block the amplified twee-tweeeeeee-tweeing that began every morning at 3am. And then one day I lost my godamned mind and grabbed my brother’s BB gun from his closet and stomped outside in my pink nightgown and flipflops. I only got two (unsuccessfull) shots off before I noticed my neighbor staring at me from her driveway, ushering her children into their oversized Suburban monstrosity. Ushering in the way you usher unsuspecting bank patrons away from the Crazy holding a gun to a tellers head. No sudden movements, don’t break eye contact, keep your voice soothing and low. I gave her my sweetest smile and told her I was just looking for some breakfast.

Those singing birds were the bane of my existence, they were the rat poison in my coffee, the dirty finger in my eye. The current birds haven’t quite made it to that level, but they are quickly moving up the Hater Food Chain. Right below People Who Don’t Understand The Proper Use of the Interstate On Ramp but above Stepping in a Puddle of Cat Vomit with Bare Feet.

I hate that I have such a horrible relationship with these animals, because for the most part I’m a sucker for anything covered in fuzzies. However, I am comforted to know that other people feel just as repulsed by glorified flying insects and once watched a movie where Zoey Daschenel stole my life. Besides her seriously lacking interpersonal skills, she had a collection of singing devil-birds outside her window and even though the movie was terrible, totally without purpose or other redeeming value, there’s a line she utters while taking a swig of beer:

“What kind of devil bird sings at night?”

Exactly. WHAT KIND OF DEVIL BIRD SINGS AT NIGHT. It’s unnatural. And then she tries to shoot one with a BB gun. And I thought, “What the fuck, this has happened to someone else? Someone ELSE shot at the singing devil birds with a BB gun? VALIDATION IS MINE.”

But the current birds don’t sing, at least not where I can hear them. And if I can’t hear them, no one else can. I hear people two blocks away, just because they thought about blinking. So there’s no singing. I can vouch for that. No, these birds have some kind of crazy, chucktastic diet that gives them serious cases of bird-diarrhea. Runny, chucky messes of bird shit. And it’s not like they can crap on the ground. Maybe even on the roof. These are wily little birds and they know, THEY KNOW, how much I hate cleaning off bird crap from my car. So that’s where they go. On my car.

Before you think, meh, whatever, everyone gets birdshit on their car, STOP. Stop thinking. It’s not like that. I washed my car last night because it set in airport long term parking for four days while I was in Phoenix and it was covered in dirt and airplane funk. This morning I go outside and there are twenty-seven (I counted) separate glops of bird excrement on varying parts of my car. As an added bonus, the biggest chunky mess was on the driver side door handle. Tasty snack for later.

And in case you were curious, like me, I’ll save you the trouble: All you ever needed to know about bird shit