The Birds
A series of coincidences has turned me into an inadvertent serial killer.
It being spring, the birds and the bees are doing what they do best. Everywhere. A few weeks back, I happened to go into my horses’ barn, which is usually unoccupied during nice weather. Horses are made out of tough stuff – the only time they seek shelter is if being tormented by insects, or it happens to be raining-slash-snowing.
So I was rather surprised to go into the barn one fine sunny day and find the three largest horses crammed into the smallest stall. Anyone who tells you “horses are claustrophobic” [which is supposedly why you cannot get the greater portion of them into a small horse trailer] has never met Zyggy, Ebony and Cynnamon. Approximately 3 tons of horseflesh manage to shoehorn themselves into an 8 by 10 foot space. Because I am who I am, and they are who they are, I simply crawl through legs and under bellies until I find room enough to surface. (Kids, don’t try this at home!)
Covered with shedding horsehair, I emerged near the wall separating the stalls. It is hollow, built with plywood over a frame of sideways 2x4s half way up, continuing with metal mesh most of the way to the roof. A nice wall by horse-owner standards. And apparently by bird standards as well – on the ledge formed by the top 2x4 (about 4 feet from the floor) sat a robin’s nest. I would never have seen it through all the horses had I not happened to come up for air right there.
Oh great. Obviously the horses hadn’t noticed it yet. Can I move it? Probably not, and besides where would I put it so A) the parents could find it and B) the eggs will survive? Sighing, I left the barn and went outside. Sure enough, two hours later I rechecked the barn, to find a crash scene.
Does that make me responsible for untimely egg spillage, in the same way that a bartender is responsible for a drunken spree resulting in vehicular homicide? Horses are kind of like very huge toddlers. Intensely curious, clumsy, and destructive. Or maybe toddlers are just like teeny tiny horses - I am not certain.
A few days later, I discovered the beginnings of a nest inside the engine of my tractor; just a pile of very soft grasses. I quickly cleaned them out before Mr. and Mrs. Bird could return. Next day, a larger pile was back. Wash, rinse, repeat .
Day Four – darn birds can’t take a hint. I find a freshly completed nest on the tractor alternator. So fresh that the mud is still wet. Sheesh! I pull it out and toss it in the grass. Victory, I have won this tiny battle!
The next week: I am driving home from work. Maybe I’m driving to work, I can’t really remember. I spend so much time in the car that I am usually on autopilot. Birds are flying around frolicking and playing chicken on M-43. Maybe they’re mating, maybe they’re fighting, maybe they’re attempting to join a confederacy. You know, like the squirrel guild, “Okay Timmy, if you can make it across the road, you get to be in the club”.
Two birds swoop down faster than the speed of sound under my right front fender and out of view. One zips out in front of my left tire. I feel the other one thunk my car’s undercarriage. Another one bites the dust. Feathers flutter in the rear-view mirror.
Last Thursday: it is 10pm and I am noticeably chilled. Since I just replaced the batteries in the programmable thermostat (which *I installed, thank you very much!), maybe I pushed the hold button or something. It’s been pretty warm the last week so the furnace hasn’t kicked on at all. Of course, the current forecast is for a week’s worth of rain, and tonight’s low is to be around 39F. I check the thermostat - it seems to be in operating status. Remove the furnace cover – AHA – the pilot light is out! Hmmm. That’s an easy fix though. Relight said pilot, switch furnace on, Viola, it kicks on. I settle down in my recliner, mentally patting myself on the back.
Half an hour later, I’m still cold. Hmmm. Pilot light out again, damn! I recreate the ritual. This time the furnace whooshes on, only to blink out two seconds later. WTF? By now it’s past my bedtime, my daughter is still up and I’m getting cranky. Each time I light the furnace it winks out faster than the previous time. I go outside (it’s pouring COLD rain) and check the propane -with no flashlight, as mine happens to be in the trunk of my now-defunct car, which is at my father-in-law’s house. For light, I have one feeble lighter, which blows out in the wind directly before getting the flint soaked by the rain. &*&%^*. I *know there’s propane in there, dammit, since I still owe over $500 for the last tankfill. Finally manage to discern that, yes, there is over 60% in the tank (whew).
Now what? Visions of melted thermocouples, broken wires, new furnaces, money with wings soaring through my mind at lightspeed. Dammit. I stress, sitting at the kitchen table looking up furnace repairmen in the yellow pages. I can’t decide to call one now or wait until morning. Since it is May, not November, I guess the pipes won’t freeze by tomorrow morning, plus I certainly don’t want to pay after-hours service charges. I grab the bathroom space heater, put it in my bedroom, grab the wide-awake child and throw her giggling into my bed, call the dog, and we all settle in for the night. I even go find and program a timer so the heater won’t stay on all night (I am deathly afraid of all things electrical causing fires). It comes on for an hour and goes off for an hour until morning.
My daughter jumps up and down on the bed for an hour, despite my efforts to restrain her, threaten her and/or stick her to the bed with duct tape. At 1:30am I am ready to go outside and sleep in the frozen horse trailer. The only thing stopping me is that the little vixen would probably dismantle the entire house before I woke up. Did I mention that toddlers were destructive? Add indefatigable to that.
Morning. Bleary eyed, I drag my ass out of bed with a resentful glance at the snoring child drooling on my pillow. One last time, I try the furnace. I hear scrabbling in the chimney. Damn. It appears that there are inhabitants. They must have slept snugly through the night, because I had no idea that someone has taken up residence in my chimney. It is still pouring. Did I also mention the week’s worth of rain in the forecast?
I trudge out to the Quonset hut and get the extension ladder. If nothing else, it will save time when the repairman gets here, as they bill by the quarter-hour. I get up on the roof, swallowing my fear of heights. The chimney cap thingie seems permanently rusted on. I was going to remove it and simply stick the shop vac hose down the vent hole, but no dice.
Amazingly the furnace guy shows up an hour and a half before I expect him. Mid to late morning must be 9:15 a.m.in this neck of the woods! 45 minutes later he and his giant 4foot long pair of tweezers are gone, as is the bird nest that was in my chimney, leaving me with a $132 bill and the assurances that mine is a common seasonal complaint among house-trailer owners.
On the way outside to start the car (I only miss ½ day of work) I walk past the horse trailer. A startled bird nearly takes off my left eyebrow. I peer underneath the gooseneck (the part that holds the trailer onto the truck). Sure enough, ANOTHER nest. With muttered curses, I grab it and haul it out. Oops.
Two little baby robins scrabble weakly on the ground where I dropped the nest. Damn and damn and damn. I call the dog.
I think this is why my home computer hard drive crashed the next day, taking 8 years of tax information and 19 years of my work history & resumes with it.
I am almost afraid to start in on the innumerable wasp nests.
It being spring, the birds and the bees are doing what they do best. Everywhere. A few weeks back, I happened to go into my horses’ barn, which is usually unoccupied during nice weather. Horses are made out of tough stuff – the only time they seek shelter is if being tormented by insects, or it happens to be raining-slash-snowing.
So I was rather surprised to go into the barn one fine sunny day and find the three largest horses crammed into the smallest stall. Anyone who tells you “horses are claustrophobic” [which is supposedly why you cannot get the greater portion of them into a small horse trailer] has never met Zyggy, Ebony and Cynnamon. Approximately 3 tons of horseflesh manage to shoehorn themselves into an 8 by 10 foot space. Because I am who I am, and they are who they are, I simply crawl through legs and under bellies until I find room enough to surface. (Kids, don’t try this at home!)
Covered with shedding horsehair, I emerged near the wall separating the stalls. It is hollow, built with plywood over a frame of sideways 2x4s half way up, continuing with metal mesh most of the way to the roof. A nice wall by horse-owner standards. And apparently by bird standards as well – on the ledge formed by the top 2x4 (about 4 feet from the floor) sat a robin’s nest. I would never have seen it through all the horses had I not happened to come up for air right there.
Oh great. Obviously the horses hadn’t noticed it yet. Can I move it? Probably not, and besides where would I put it so A) the parents could find it and B) the eggs will survive? Sighing, I left the barn and went outside. Sure enough, two hours later I rechecked the barn, to find a crash scene.
Does that make me responsible for untimely egg spillage, in the same way that a bartender is responsible for a drunken spree resulting in vehicular homicide? Horses are kind of like very huge toddlers. Intensely curious, clumsy, and destructive. Or maybe toddlers are just like teeny tiny horses - I am not certain.
A few days later, I discovered the beginnings of a nest inside the engine of my tractor; just a pile of very soft grasses. I quickly cleaned them out before Mr. and Mrs. Bird could return. Next day, a larger pile was back. Wash, rinse, repeat .
Day Four – darn birds can’t take a hint. I find a freshly completed nest on the tractor alternator. So fresh that the mud is still wet. Sheesh! I pull it out and toss it in the grass. Victory, I have won this tiny battle!
The next week: I am driving home from work. Maybe I’m driving to work, I can’t really remember. I spend so much time in the car that I am usually on autopilot. Birds are flying around frolicking and playing chicken on M-43. Maybe they’re mating, maybe they’re fighting, maybe they’re attempting to join a confederacy. You know, like the squirrel guild, “Okay Timmy, if you can make it across the road, you get to be in the club”.
Two birds swoop down faster than the speed of sound under my right front fender and out of view. One zips out in front of my left tire. I feel the other one thunk my car’s undercarriage. Another one bites the dust. Feathers flutter in the rear-view mirror.
Last Thursday: it is 10pm and I am noticeably chilled. Since I just replaced the batteries in the programmable thermostat (which *I installed, thank you very much!), maybe I pushed the hold button or something. It’s been pretty warm the last week so the furnace hasn’t kicked on at all. Of course, the current forecast is for a week’s worth of rain, and tonight’s low is to be around 39F. I check the thermostat - it seems to be in operating status. Remove the furnace cover – AHA – the pilot light is out! Hmmm. That’s an easy fix though. Relight said pilot, switch furnace on, Viola, it kicks on. I settle down in my recliner, mentally patting myself on the back.
Half an hour later, I’m still cold. Hmmm. Pilot light out again, damn! I recreate the ritual. This time the furnace whooshes on, only to blink out two seconds later. WTF? By now it’s past my bedtime, my daughter is still up and I’m getting cranky. Each time I light the furnace it winks out faster than the previous time. I go outside (it’s pouring COLD rain) and check the propane -with no flashlight, as mine happens to be in the trunk of my now-defunct car, which is at my father-in-law’s house. For light, I have one feeble lighter, which blows out in the wind directly before getting the flint soaked by the rain. &*&%^*. I *know there’s propane in there, dammit, since I still owe over $500 for the last tankfill. Finally manage to discern that, yes, there is over 60% in the tank (whew).
Now what? Visions of melted thermocouples, broken wires, new furnaces, money with wings soaring through my mind at lightspeed. Dammit. I stress, sitting at the kitchen table looking up furnace repairmen in the yellow pages. I can’t decide to call one now or wait until morning. Since it is May, not November, I guess the pipes won’t freeze by tomorrow morning, plus I certainly don’t want to pay after-hours service charges. I grab the bathroom space heater, put it in my bedroom, grab the wide-awake child and throw her giggling into my bed, call the dog, and we all settle in for the night. I even go find and program a timer so the heater won’t stay on all night (I am deathly afraid of all things electrical causing fires). It comes on for an hour and goes off for an hour until morning.
My daughter jumps up and down on the bed for an hour, despite my efforts to restrain her, threaten her and/or stick her to the bed with duct tape. At 1:30am I am ready to go outside and sleep in the frozen horse trailer. The only thing stopping me is that the little vixen would probably dismantle the entire house before I woke up. Did I mention that toddlers were destructive? Add indefatigable to that.
Morning. Bleary eyed, I drag my ass out of bed with a resentful glance at the snoring child drooling on my pillow. One last time, I try the furnace. I hear scrabbling in the chimney. Damn. It appears that there are inhabitants. They must have slept snugly through the night, because I had no idea that someone has taken up residence in my chimney. It is still pouring. Did I also mention the week’s worth of rain in the forecast?
I trudge out to the Quonset hut and get the extension ladder. If nothing else, it will save time when the repairman gets here, as they bill by the quarter-hour. I get up on the roof, swallowing my fear of heights. The chimney cap thingie seems permanently rusted on. I was going to remove it and simply stick the shop vac hose down the vent hole, but no dice.
Amazingly the furnace guy shows up an hour and a half before I expect him. Mid to late morning must be 9:15 a.m.in this neck of the woods! 45 minutes later he and his giant 4foot long pair of tweezers are gone, as is the bird nest that was in my chimney, leaving me with a $132 bill and the assurances that mine is a common seasonal complaint among house-trailer owners.
On the way outside to start the car (I only miss ½ day of work) I walk past the horse trailer. A startled bird nearly takes off my left eyebrow. I peer underneath the gooseneck (the part that holds the trailer onto the truck). Sure enough, ANOTHER nest. With muttered curses, I grab it and haul it out. Oops.
Two little baby robins scrabble weakly on the ground where I dropped the nest. Damn and damn and damn. I call the dog.
I think this is why my home computer hard drive crashed the next day, taking 8 years of tax information and 19 years of my work history & resumes with it.
I am almost afraid to start in on the innumerable wasp nests.
posted by 40angst @ 3:54 PM
2 comments
