While I nodded, nearly napping
While I nodded, nearly napping 01-29-2009
There is a bird, a little brown and yellow bird, that has been outside my window for the last four days. It’s a yellow-throat warbler if you need some more information to complete the visual. I know that because my grandmother used to watch the birds in her backyard all the time and I used to sit out there with her as a kid. This bird though… this bird wakes up at 6:00 am in the morning.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
Tapping on my window while I’m sleeping isn’t the wisest thing. Growing up with four brothers and spending nearly eight years living with a girl with a propensity for violence tends to make you sleep a little lightly. I can go from REM sleep to “who’s getting kicked in the face” pretty quickly. I almost clubbed my roommate’s girlfriend with a police baton one night when they stumbled back in drunk and without his keys. I was supposed to be on the road, and they were checking for an open window. Poor, poor, girl. She didn’t know.
But I digress. My first reaction was that it was simply learning to fly. It’s obviously young, and it sits perched on the window sill until it finds either the courage or the strength to jump; then it flits up a few feet, smacks it’s beak against the window, and settles back down on the ledge. Every twenty seconds.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
Most people would have shot it by now, and I know for a fact that if it were a person doing this, I already would have. Somehow I’m more forgiving of animals.
Plus, I’m pretty sure this bird is retarded. I’m serious. Like I said, I thought it was learning to fly and using the window the same way you would use a handrail if you were learning to walk. This bird can fly though. When I flick at it through the window it flies up into the trees. It is trying to get at something on the other side of that window, though I’m pretty sure there is nothing but a curtain there. It’s my room, I should know.
re·tard·ed: banging your head up against a wall for days in a row and expecting something different to happen
Stupid, stupid bird. The thing is, I know a lot of people exactly like that. I think that’s why I haven’t killed this bird. I’ve done a really good job of clearing out the dead weight in my real life friend’s list but somehow I still keep a handful around, whether by choice or necessity. I figure that if I can choose to deal with retarded people, then I am somehow obligated to tolerate this retarded bird. At least with people, you can explain to them that the window is solid (and that there is probably a door right around the corner), but the bird doesn’t get that. I know because I tried, just in the off chance it was one of those talking Disney birds.
So now I am down to only a couple of options, wait for it to either leave on it’s own or die. The longest recorded life span of one of these birds is 5.1 years. It can’t keep tapping. I will break. Or move. Or get a bobcat. I’ll sharpen it’s claws myself. All I know is that five years from now one of us will not be here. That much is certain.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
And why my chamber door? Poe’s raven, if I remember anything from high school correctly, represented his reoccurring memories and sadness surrounding his dead wife. To begin with, I have nothing like that in my life that requires a symbolic bird.
Second of all, why don’t I get a cool bird? Ravens rock. Big, black, evil looking things… the kind of birds Norse gods kept and football teams are named after. I get a mentally handicapped yellow-throated warbler. I am such a bad ass. Here comes Slade with his tapping warbler. Back up everybody! I get an avian Gregory Peck.
Now that I think about it, I’m starting to get pissed. This started out as cute little parable about the futility of doing the same thing over and over and it’s turned into a lovely little rant typed by a guy who is about to start killing birds.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
Fuck this. I’m going to buy a slingshot.
-Slade Ham
http://www.sladeham.com
The right tool for the job.