The BIRDS!

Why did the deer cross the road? Who the HELL knows!? But their limp, bloody, dismembered carcasses littered the expressways more than usual this year. It made the fall season extra special for those of us here in upstate New York. Taking a nice leisurely drive in the countryside smelling crisp cool air, seeing golden color of the autumn leaves and oh look…a dead doe! As we drive along a few more yards…and there’s her head….and spleen…and her left hoof. With as little sense as God gave a goose, these white tailed cousins of Bambi manage to dodge bears, coyotes, wolves, traps and the occasional drunken hunter. You would think they would know enough to leap out of the way of a motor vehicle moving at sixty-five miles an hour but they don’t. In the end both the deer and the driver pay a price. The deer ends up, well, dead (most of the time) and the driver pays one or two grand in damages because of the four-legged moron. Luckily for me (knock on the nearest piece of simulated wood) I have yet to “run into” one of these antlered speed bumps. I have a problem with other members of the animal kingdom namely seagulls and crows!

About a month ago, I was headed out to the market on a bright and crisp fall Sunday morning to pick up a few things for the week. On my way to store I came to a stoplight at a major intersection. It being Sunday morning the traffic was lite, so there were a few seagulls and various other birds pecking at garbage on the side of the road on the other side of the intersection. After a few seconds passed, the light turned green and I began to pull through the intersection. When my car began to move forward and pick up momentum some of the birds noticed a large metal monster (well, in their eyes a Ford Focus can look like a beast) headed toward them. In a frenzy the birds flew off to avoid being squashed, MOST of them anyway. As I got closer to the spot where the birds were enjoying their trash buffet, a couple of seagulls were playing tug of war over what looked like a Reese’s Buttercup wrapper. They didn’t seem to be moving, so I tooted my horn. At the last possible second, they decided to fly off. The fatter of the two seem to have trouble with take off and apparently navigation because he flew into the top of my windshield. I have to say there’s nothing more disturbing than the dull, muffled ‘THUD’ sound one of these flying rats make when they hit your car. After the flying feather duster hit my car, I looked in the rearview mirror see if his pudgy little body was laying in the middle of the street. When I didn’t see anything I wondered if the filthy scavenger became impaled on my radio antenna. I pulled over to check but I didn’t see any dead bird hanging there like one of those plastic balls people use to find their car in a crowded parking lot. Somehow the impact with my car must have been just the push his fat ‘gull ass needed to jettison him into the air and fly off. This would have been my second encounter with one of these winged rodents in the past three months. I think word is beginning to spread within the waterfowl community and an unholy alliance has been formed.

Each evening around dust a flock of crows do their interpretation of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds.’ It’s uneasy show to hear, let alone see for those of us with skylights. But I believe that these are the birds the seagulls have formed their alliance with and here is why. Every night these vermin fly over my neighborhood, the ‘kawing’ begins as a soft noise off in the distance but quickly builds to an annoying roar over head. Soon the sky is black with crows all there to serve on purpose. To paint my car with shit! After nature’s para-demons are done with nightly poop assault I go outside to assess the damage. When they’re done my silver Focus looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. Now I know what you’re thinking, “They’re not just gunning for your car.” Oh yes, they are! I’ve taken a tour around the neighborhood after one of these raids and every other car on the block are sparkly clean.

Now I have never done anything to a crow to rate this kind of retaliation. It is my belief the seagulls have sent the crows as an act of revenge for what they assume is trying to “bump off” two of their own. They are fiendish birds and well known for not liking to get their hands dirty when it comes to criminal activity. That’s right! They are the Godfathers of birds! Let’s hope the deer don’t go to them for a “favor.”