The birds pecked a hole in my side of the house the size of Mount Washington. I anticipate the night when the mob of them breaks through into my room. I can almost picture them flocking about, as if rabid, tearing down my kitty-cat posters and wall papers I’ve had up since elementary school. I see them poking holes in my moshi pillows, bursting the beads, and ripping out my hair - material they find perfect for nest-building.
Day and night they torture me with continuous screeches and cries. I’m positive they are re-enacting a version of West Side Story just outside the wallpaper of kittens chasing a butterfly. There are a handful of them with high, earsplitting croaks, the jets maybe. And the other half have low, raspy, urgent squawks - probably the sharks.
They battle over which gang has rights to the wall, scratching and fumbling and thrashing and bellowing, until one bird completely out-powers the rest of the flock with a heart-stopping cry that surpasses the approximate decibel level where my ears spill blood. This cry I usually call the death whistle.
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The bird with the death whistle is Tony, who has fallen due to gang violence. Once Tony is declared dead, all the rest of the birds whisper their sentiments as if they are mourning the loss of the logic of their division. They console each other with quiet chirps and kind caws. This lasts for a good five minutes - until they hit an epiphany. They realize the bird cops will swing by soon, probably armed with wing clippers or tazers. They’ll all be arrested and jailed and will be forced to sing for money or enlist in the bird army (Hitchcock is right, okay. We have to prepare ourselves.). They then become overwhelmed with the sadness of these inevitable circumstances while some others are driven to complete madness. Supplied with these polarizing emotions, they start attacking each other again with 10 times the ferocity and 10 times the bloodshed becoming exponentially louder and more obnoxious with each fleeting second - blocking me from the silence of my mind. Distracting me from the ideas I want to develop. Acting as an excuse for my inability to write well.
Well, I’m sick of my excuses and I am sick of seeing the obstacles and not having the guts to dodge them - or mentally silence them. So, instead of viewing these birds as excuses, they will become the subject. I will never again allow birds to get in the way of my ambitions. How will you escape the birds?
