For the past couple of years, we have been terrorized by a deranged Mockingbird. This bird wants nothing else in life but to come inside our house, probably to peck us to death.
"Crash," as we now call him, attempts to fly though the master bedroom windows from morning till night. He sits on a nearby branch or on the window ledge, then lurches at the window, scratching it with his scratchy claws and flapping his wings against the pane. And he does this over and over and over. It's unbelievably annoying.
But the worst part is the incessant pecking.
Oh, the pecking. Peck. Peckpeck. Peckpeckpeck.
Peck.
We wake to his crazed pecking, flapping and scratching every morning. Early. Before dawn.
We've tried scaring him away. We've opened the blinds. Closed the blinds. We've thrown rocks at him.
"Why don't we open the window and catch him when he flies in?" our son suggested last year. "We could just wring his neck and be done with it!"
Horrified, yet oddly intrigued by such a thought, we decided that was probably too violent so we'd instead incorporate a "catch and release" program. My husband was going to let him in, catch him, then blindfold him and take him far, far away so he'd never find his way back.
But just as suddenly as Crash had appeared, he was gone from our window ledge. We figured he was on his way to Mexico to abuse some unsuspecting hacienda down there.
We breathed a sigh of relief. Crash's reign of terror seemed to have ended peacefully.
Until last week.
Once again, we were awakened by the pecking. The flapping. The scratching.
We laid there in disbelief. By the third morning our disbelief had turned to white hot rage.
"That's it," my man said.
He strapped on his boots and headed out to the yard in his bathrobe. His shadow fell across the grass and I could see he held his BB gun, just like when he hunted down his other nemesis, the squirrel cartel. Hey man, you don't mess with a guy in boots and a bathrobe who's toting a BB gun.
Minutes later, he came back in with a satisfied smile.
"I can't say for sure if I got 'im," he said. "But there was a puff of feathers and then he disappeared."
We went to sleep that night with the anticipation of a delicious Saturday sleep-in. It was going to feel so good, and we deserved it.
6:45 am.
Peck. Peckpeck. Peckpeckpeck. Peck.
He's baaaaa-aaack.
And so the nightmare continues.
Today's Small Thing is to get rid of a pesky annoyance. While we try and figure out how to rid ourselves of our deranged, feathered stalker, you can tackle something infinitely more fun. How about: applying WD-40 to a squeaky hinge that's been bugging you for months now? Or removing tags from pillows you've had for a year? You could pull the blue painter's tape from July's paint project, or finally put on the drawer pulls that have been sitting there forever. Hang the picture that's leaning up against the wall, tighten a leaky faucet, super glue that plate back together.
You know you've got stuff that's bugging you! Just pick one and eliminate it today.
POINTS: 50, because it feels good to get rid of something pesky.
Note: no animals were harmed in the making of this true story, although we tried our best to do so.
