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Battle of the Birds
by Tony Bender
8-10-10
Our trouble with flying things has not reached the epic proportion of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, a movie in which flocks of birds fiercely attack the residents of a sleepy east coast community until someone suggests they abandon the longstanding tradition of wearing millet necklaces. After you see what they do to Suzanne Pleshette, you’ll never turn your back on a parakeet again.
But at our house, while shooting has broken out and the body count is high, all of the casualties so far are birds. The Redhead has declared war on the barn swallows that keep trying to build their mud nests above the front step. At first, she used a pressure washer to wash the nests away, but barn swallows are remarkably persistent. Once, I dozed off in the hammock and they built a nest in my ear. For a few days, I thought the chirping was the onset of tinnitus.
Even our Springer spaniel, Karma, has joined the fray. While she has been known to poach a duck or pheasant out of season, this year she has decided to specialize in blackbirds. Every day she brings The Redhead the warm corpse of a blackbird, which in dog language means, “I love you.” So when your husband brings home pheasants for you to clean just remember that.
If you visit us, please forgive the blackbird bodies in the yard. It’s starting to freak the mailman out. We still have not figured out how our 11-year old dog—that’s 157 years old in Keith Richards years— manages to catch blackbirds. Maybe she can fly when no one is looking. Perhaps the blackbirds are eating fermented berries and have decided against flying in their condition. If Karma could catch barn swallows, we would really be impressed.
Instead, The Redhead has begun toting a BB gun to the patio each morning. That’s right. She’s packing heat. She’s big on the Second Amendment. She sips coffee, checks her e-mail and shoots anything that moves and a few things that don’t. She put a hole in the siding the other day.
It is her custom to leave the front door open a crack so our herd of cats can come and go as they please. One of them—El Tigre—is a Bengal, a particularly skittish breed. Very jumpy. Very Shy. But after three years, she’s relaxed enough to venture outside, comforted by the knowledge of the escape route back into the house. Well, the other day, El Tigre was lounging in the morning sun while The Redhead blasted away at barn swallows. Pfft. Pfft. When miraculously the body of a barn swallow plummeted to earth, El Tigre’s instincts kicked in. She snatched the still kicking bird and raced into the house, The Redhead in hot pursuit. With some notable exceptions, The Redhead does not tolerate near-lifeless bodies in her house.
When I came home later that day, she told me what had happened.
“Nice shooting, Deadeye,” I said.
“There’s one other thing.”
(Uhh-oh)
“I can’t find El Tigre,” she continued, “and I can’t find the bird.”
“Give it a few days,” I laughed, “and you won’t have any trouble finding the bird.”
Later that night, the cats were staring, transfixed, at something under the cockatiel cage. Sure enough, it was the barn swallow, miraculously still alive. Barely. Now, under normal circumstances, the poor thing would have been dispatched in short order, but our daughter India was there, and besides, it would have been traumatic for the cockatiels. India, who is a compassionate soul, insisted that they try to save the bird, not knowing it was her mother’s mortal enemy and that she had gunned it down in the first place.
It was decided that food and water would do the bird a world of good. After that, the bird keeled over. Let me say now, I was against the salsa from the beginning. At least I didn’t get a vet bill out of the deal. Once I had to pay to have a turtle’s shell glued back together. I think they used Gorilla Glue, which is trans-species applicable—good for primates and reptiles alike.
Things have returned to normal. Karma continues to thin the flock of blackbirds, and sadly, one lone barn swallow keeps circling while The Redhead shoots holes in the house.
© Tony Bender, 2010
