melluransa (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
melluransa) wrote2012-06-30 02:50 pm
melluransa) wrote2012-06-30 02:50 pm
I don't like birds
After reflecting on my past experiences with birds, and some recent ones, I came to the realization that I don't like birds. You could even go as far as to say I have a severe dislike of them.
I used to work at a pet store, and I think that's when I really got to know birds for the jerks they are. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. The racket from the parakeets (also known as "budgerigar") was constant, all day. The lovebirds and lorikeets bit me when I'd try to put food and water in the cage. The finches would fly away terrified at every approach and make desperate breaks for it when I'd open the cage.
But then, oh then, there was THAT BIRD. The owner affectionately nicknamed him "knucklehead." As for me, I nicknamed him "the histrionic, abusive, over-assuming asshole with feathers and an ambivalent personality disorder." This bird was the $1,500 African Gray Parrot that (wisely) nobody ever bought. It got the priveledge to fly loose around the store. Therein lied the problem.
It would sit on the balcony of the upper level of the store, eating millet. Seeds would rain down all the time, but the whole millet cluster would land on your head right as you walked under. What a coincidence, huh? Additionally, the mess led to me vacuuming excessively with the loudest and poorest quality vacuum that looked like it had been found in a dumpster. I think the bird took pleasure in my suffering.
But that was just the millet! He bit all the time. Another time, I was on the lower level by the cash register, and all of a sudden, I felt this wind on my face and blowing my hair. What? I was confused. What was going on? OH YEAH, IT WAS THE BIRD ABOUT TO COLLIDE WITH MY HEAD. I was smacked in the face with feathers from rapidly-flapping wings. Sharp shooting pains cut through my shoulder (claws in my shoulder), my hair was pulled (it bit and pulled at it to stabilize landing), and it even bit my ear (for stability, again. Wouldn't want the overpriced bastard to fall and possibly hurt itself). The damn thing had decided to land on my shoulder. After the pain jogged me out of my initial state of surprise, I literally shrugged the thing off and it launched into the air, which involved digging its claws further into the delicate dermis of my shoulder when doing so.
That was the pet store experience. There are more.
Geese on campus. There are so many geese on campus and they are aggressive. I've had to take my bag or backpack and fend them away. "Back, fowl beast -- back!" I've done this myself and for other people who don't know how to push them back. Geese poop covers the sidewalk profusely. In the clinic, we sometimes take the kids outside to draw on the sidewalk. Guess what. Poop everywhere. That's sanitary. They cross the road, waddling along and taking their sweet time. Their honks are ear-shattering.
Poop. Poop on the car. On the roof. On the sidewalk. On you. Nowhere is safe. Birds aim that shit. I heard once that this one culture out there -- China, maybe -- views it as lucky to be pooped on by a bird. I see it as a malicious and intentional curse of evil. They take aim and mark you and your property with little fecal bombs they drop. That shit doesn't come off easily, either. If it's on the surface of the car or windows, and dries in the sun? Get your arm ready for some scrubbing.
More recent experiences have also been considered when I came to my conclusion of bird dislike. A bird pooped on me last month, specifically on the fabric part of my shoe and not the wipe-able plastic nylon part. Sparrows wake me up in the morning. There are some that like to hang out on the rain gutter right above my bedroom window, and their little hopping and their clawed scaly feet make noise on the metal of the gutter. When we had a birdfeeder, the cardinals and finches came and got seeds E V E R Y W H E R E.
The thing I dislike about birds the most is the noise they produce. Birdsong and birds "singing" makes you think of little happy melodies. If the noise that birds make is your definition of "singing," then we have some stark, stark differences in our person lexicons and vocabularies going on here. Click these links and listen to these. Or don't, I don't blame you. I wouldn't. This is what I have to hear every time I go for a jog, or walk the dogs. I can even hear these particular species inside the house, while the air-conditioning is on.
Killdeer. What makes killdeer especially awful is that they follow you as you move into their territory. They follow on wing or on foot. Their cries are at a frequency where they are very loud. They follow around 6 feet away, so their proximity makes their extremely annoying squeals even louder.
Red-winged blackbirds. Red-winged blackbirds just sit there in a tree or on a telephone wire and screech. They don't even have the decency to fly around and put in effort. They just sit there. They call at each other, like a sort of sound-off from tree to tree. ReeroREEEEEE. ..... ReereREEEEE ..... ReereREEEEE ..... ReereREEEEE ..... You get the idea. And there are so many.
In conclusion, I wish I had a superpower. It's a very specific one. I wish I had to power to make a bird explode just by looking at it and concentrating. I guess to be nicer, I could say that they simply disappear instead of exploding, but explosions are more satisfying. If this power were isolated to one species of bird only, I would choose killdeer without a second thought.
I used to work at a pet store, and I think that's when I really got to know birds for the jerks they are. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. The racket from the parakeets (also known as "budgerigar") was constant, all day. The lovebirds and lorikeets bit me when I'd try to put food and water in the cage. The finches would fly away terrified at every approach and make desperate breaks for it when I'd open the cage.
But then, oh then, there was THAT BIRD. The owner affectionately nicknamed him "knucklehead." As for me, I nicknamed him "the histrionic, abusive, over-assuming asshole with feathers and an ambivalent personality disorder." This bird was the $1,500 African Gray Parrot that (wisely) nobody ever bought. It got the priveledge to fly loose around the store. Therein lied the problem.
It would sit on the balcony of the upper level of the store, eating millet. Seeds would rain down all the time, but the whole millet cluster would land on your head right as you walked under. What a coincidence, huh? Additionally, the mess led to me vacuuming excessively with the loudest and poorest quality vacuum that looked like it had been found in a dumpster. I think the bird took pleasure in my suffering.
But that was just the millet! He bit all the time. Another time, I was on the lower level by the cash register, and all of a sudden, I felt this wind on my face and blowing my hair. What? I was confused. What was going on? OH YEAH, IT WAS THE BIRD ABOUT TO COLLIDE WITH MY HEAD. I was smacked in the face with feathers from rapidly-flapping wings. Sharp shooting pains cut through my shoulder (claws in my shoulder), my hair was pulled (it bit and pulled at it to stabilize landing), and it even bit my ear (for stability, again. Wouldn't want the overpriced bastard to fall and possibly hurt itself). The damn thing had decided to land on my shoulder. After the pain jogged me out of my initial state of surprise, I literally shrugged the thing off and it launched into the air, which involved digging its claws further into the delicate dermis of my shoulder when doing so.
That was the pet store experience. There are more.
Geese on campus. There are so many geese on campus and they are aggressive. I've had to take my bag or backpack and fend them away. "Back, fowl beast -- back!" I've done this myself and for other people who don't know how to push them back. Geese poop covers the sidewalk profusely. In the clinic, we sometimes take the kids outside to draw on the sidewalk. Guess what. Poop everywhere. That's sanitary. They cross the road, waddling along and taking their sweet time. Their honks are ear-shattering.
Poop. Poop on the car. On the roof. On the sidewalk. On you. Nowhere is safe. Birds aim that shit. I heard once that this one culture out there -- China, maybe -- views it as lucky to be pooped on by a bird. I see it as a malicious and intentional curse of evil. They take aim and mark you and your property with little fecal bombs they drop. That shit doesn't come off easily, either. If it's on the surface of the car or windows, and dries in the sun? Get your arm ready for some scrubbing.
More recent experiences have also been considered when I came to my conclusion of bird dislike. A bird pooped on me last month, specifically on the fabric part of my shoe and not the wipe-able plastic nylon part. Sparrows wake me up in the morning. There are some that like to hang out on the rain gutter right above my bedroom window, and their little hopping and their clawed scaly feet make noise on the metal of the gutter. When we had a birdfeeder, the cardinals and finches came and got seeds E V E R Y W H E R E.
The thing I dislike about birds the most is the noise they produce. Birdsong and birds "singing" makes you think of little happy melodies. If the noise that birds make is your definition of "singing," then we have some stark, stark differences in our person lexicons and vocabularies going on here. Click these links and listen to these. Or don't, I don't blame you. I wouldn't. This is what I have to hear every time I go for a jog, or walk the dogs. I can even hear these particular species inside the house, while the air-conditioning is on.
Killdeer. What makes killdeer especially awful is that they follow you as you move into their territory. They follow on wing or on foot. Their cries are at a frequency where they are very loud. They follow around 6 feet away, so their proximity makes their extremely annoying squeals even louder.
Red-winged blackbirds. Red-winged blackbirds just sit there in a tree or on a telephone wire and screech. They don't even have the decency to fly around and put in effort. They just sit there. They call at each other, like a sort of sound-off from tree to tree. ReeroREEEEEE. ..... ReereREEEEE ..... ReereREEEEE ..... ReereREEEEE ..... You get the idea. And there are so many.
In conclusion, I wish I had a superpower. It's a very specific one. I wish I had to power to make a bird explode just by looking at it and concentrating. I guess to be nicer, I could say that they simply disappear instead of exploding, but explosions are more satisfying. If this power were isolated to one species of bird only, I would choose killdeer without a second thought.