It is said that Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird. Impressive to be sure, but I am not really into killing stones. Birds on the other hand, have been committing suicide on my back porch for the last few weeks. Ah, you might say, her windows must be so clean the birds think they aren’t even there. Alas, this would be an incorrect assumption as I don’t actually clean my windows.
Cleaning windows is a lot like dusting or mopping the floor. It may look good for a minute or two but all you succeed in doing is making a dirt, dust, juice or bird magnet. When my kids were younger, it never failed. I would mop my floor and within ten minutes someone would spill some sort of juice on it. Even if no one was home other than me…juice would magically appear on the newly cleaned floor. It is one of those unexplained mysteries, like missing socks and disappearing spoons. Somewhere, there is probably a land filled with sock puppets eating ice cream and laughing about our confused searching. Jokes on them, my kids don’t like matched socks anymore. At least the girls don’t. I have thought about making an official holiday to forever remember the day I figured out I didn’t have to match their socks any more.
Back to the birds. I was serious when I said they were committing suicide. That is the only explanation I can come up with. I have found several dead birds on my back porch when I have gone out to water my (amazing) garden lately. These aren’t your run of the mill brown sparrows either. They are pretty birds. The last one I found was bright yellow with red and black markings on it. You may remember that I have cats and think I’m an idiot for not assuming the cats aren’t killing them. Again, you would be mistaken and obviously out of date. My cats have become (reluctantly) indoor cats again after Carter’s fateful ‘foot biting’ a few weeks ago. They are getting fat and lazy, but they are staying alive. And not killing birds.
I can’t help but think of all those ‘end of the world’ movies where the birds start falling from the sky. The Seventh Sign, with Demi Moore, was one of my favorite movies as a teen. It was a hauntingly emotional story about the well of souls running out. That movie had a bird die in it….no more souls. I know there have been other movies about massive amounts of birds dying and that being a signal of some polar shift or skreetching halt of the spinning world, but I’m bad with names…even movie names it seems tonight.
I don’t seriously think the birds dying in my back yard are a sign of the end of the world, but I do wonder what it is all about. I had my house ‘doused’ with extermination a few weeks ago when they started building a big school around the corner…I didn’t want to be the new party pad for all the unhoused critters….call me stingy if you must. Maybe the exterminator really did put a ‘barrier’ around my house to protect it. I’m envisioning one of those bubbles over and around my house….like the one in the Simpson Movie…did you see that? I’m sorry if you did. Full frontal nudity in a cartoon? Seriously? Not needed and disappointing to be sure.
What ever is causing the demise of my feathered friends, I am not exactly sure what the proper protocol is. I just scooped up the first few and put them in the dumpster. Should I be burying them or holding small tasteful funeral services for them? I could put up little invitations by my hummingbird feeder to invite the birds. I’m sure they would ‘flock’ to the gathering….especially if I had some bird seed as refreshments. Then again, they might look at me as some sort of serial bird killer and plot my death by pecking me to death. I saw The Birds….and frankly, I don’t think the birds can be trusted. I think I’ll stick with the dumpster….cause I said so.
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