It's not like I woke up one day and decided to hate our avian friends. Taken separately, their attacks against me may not seem like much, but when you look at the sum of the parts, you'll see that I had no choice but to declare war on birds.
1984
I guess it all started during the final days of the summer of 1984. I was walking along the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey, euphoric from the recent win of some cheap, plastic trinket acquired by putting roughly 183 nickels in those coin waterfall machines (the official gateway drug to slots). The sun was hot, but I was hotter in my "We Came, We Saw, We Kicked Its Ass" Ghosbusters t-shirt and my wrap-around shades.I may be mistaken as my memory is somewhat foggy, but there's a damn good chance I was strutting down the boardwalk, a dangerous mix of summer sweat, hormones, and Bill Murray memorabilia, until a bird shit all over my exposed leg. I looked up in the sky and saw the laughing seagull heckling me as he headed toward an unsuspecting elderly couple sharing a bag of popcorn. The strutting turned to running as I hurried back to my grandparents' rental to clean myself up because, let's face it, it's hard to flirt with fourteen-year-old girls when you've got birdshit all over your leg.
1997
Many years later, I was sharing an apartment with my then-girlfriend/now-wife and our lovable, but dumb basset hound. Four or five Canadian geese also called the apartment complex home, though I think their rent was much cheaper. During the spring of that year, they became extremely territorial. When I would take my basset out for a walk, we would often stumble across a goose or two. I tried to keep her away from these beasts, but more often than not, we would find ourselves within striking distance of a goose.When we got too close to one of the devils, it would start hissing at us. Hissing, not honking. Honking is what they do when they're flying overhead in their v-shaped formations, trying to fool you into thinking they're cute. Hissing is what they do when they're readying to attack. Unfortunately, my dog thought this hissing was goosespeak for "Wanna play?" So she ran toward the goose, tail-a-wagging. The goose mistook my basset's friendliness as an affront, so the goose opened its mouth, displaying its eight-inch-long teeth.
While a good majority of the population is blissfully unaware that geese hiss, I'm sure an even greater number of people do not realize that geese, despite their tiny mouths, possess eight-inch-long teeth. I think they must be retractable or something.
Not wishing to have my basset hound get its eyes pecked out and eventually mauled by a pissed off goose, I picked up my dog and ran as fast as I could back to the apartment while carrying sixty pounds of hound with a goose hissing at my heels.
2004
Despite my fear of birds, my pregnant wife talked me into taking two-year-old Zoey to a nearby pond to feed the ducks. I figured if push came to shove, I could probably take a duck, so I reluctantly agreed.The three of us were down there for about half an hour, feeding pieces of bread to the very sweet and grateful ducks, taking photographs, and enjoying the autumn day when I heard the bloodcurdling cry of one of nature's deadliest creatures.
HONK!
I froze.
I looked across the pond and saw three Canadian geese standing on the shore, eyeing us. Finally, they entered the water and began swimming toward us.
HONK! HONK! HONK!
Watching the geese closing in on us, I felt like Chief Brody as the great white barreled toward the Orca. But since I did not have a rifle and the geese didn't have oxygen tanks in their mouths, I did the only thing I could do: I swooped up Zoey and yelled, "ELLA! GEESE!" We all ran back to the car and watched the geese chase the ducks away and dine on the remaining breadcrumbs.
1991
It was springtime and I was a twenty-one-year-old college student, a moment in time that most people would look back on fondly as their Glory Days.Instead, I was trying to figure how to get to class alive.
Every morning, I stood in front of the library, psyching myself up for the impending battle. I secured my bookbag tightly to my back. Knowing damn well it could've been my last cigarette, I sucked that thing until I tasted filter. Finally, I took off across the street in a fast gait, all jittery while constantly looking ahead, behind, to the left and right, and above me as I made my way toward the chemistry building. I must've looked like a crackhead.
It never struck from the same spot twice, but for two solid weeks, a bird would swoop down from the sky, grab some of my long, blond hair in its beak, and try to rip it from my head. Once the attack began, I would swing my hands blindly at my head as my fast gait turned into a full-out run, accompanied by a girlish scream.
I tried hats. I tried walking with my bookbag over my head. I tried alternate routes. The bird still found me.
And my hair.
But after two weeks, the attacks stopped. I never saw the bird again and can only assume that it had finally accumulated enough of my hair to build a proper nest. I later found out that I wasn't the only one it had been targeting: a female classmate with hair of similar length and color had also been unsuccessfully trying to fend off the bird.
Conclusion
I seem to have a lot of stories that involve me running from birds.But it's time for revenge.
The chickens are coming home to roost.
