The Birdfeeder

I noticed an interesting bird around my place and, in the spirit of Spring, decided to make a birdfeeder for him! It is quite a striking looking bird: black and gray wings with a white body and an orange beak and big goofy orange webbed feet. About the size of a football. Not sure what they’re called, but I call it a ‘black & white’.

Given how big it is, I built the birdfeeder by taking a cafeteria lunch tray and affixing it to a post outside my giant picture window with little straps–much the way one might see a ‘cigarette girl’ in old movies walking about a swank smoky lounge selling things to gentlemen. I filled the tray up with ‘Wild Delight Better Blend Song-Bird Wild Bird Food’ about a half an inch thick and waited. I was thinking that maybe the black & whites like to sing and the food might induce them to sing. Well, I didn’t have to wait long . . . after a short while it landed right in the middle of the tray, pecked cautiously for a moment and then broke into song. Well, it wasn’t a song so much as an extended high-pitched undulating and grating cackle, an angry wobbling cackle while he bent his head and neck straight and low and looked at me through my window with his beady eyes. I think he was mad at me, and began to kick his feet around in the birdseed disconsolately, spraying the birdseed about in all directions. It reminded me of a little kid kicking leaves in the Fall on the way to school. So, I guess he didn’t like the birdseed, and so, it’s back to the drawing board.

Over the next week or so, I tried several different types of birdseed but I got escalating displays of anger from the bird. One morning, I was staring out the window watching while eating a toasted English Muffin and this same bird, disappointed yet again with the offered fare, actually shot to the window and pecked at it hard with his beak right where I was standing and seemingly right at my face! I was startled and staggered back! Although I was angry and scared for a second, and worried about the large spider crack that appeared in my big picture window, I thought that he might be trying to tell me something. . . perhaps the way Lassie used to try to lead little Timmy to a realization. Crazy as it sounds, I think he might have been telling me that he wanted the English Muffin. Am I crazy?

I went out my side door and approached the cafeteria tray, still a little shaken, and threw the remains of the English Muffin in the tray. Man, I am telling you, that bird dove onto it and gobbled it up like there was no tomorrow! Voila! He must like English Muffins! I’d never heard of a bird with a penchant for a specific breakfast toast but, hey, I never heard of a lot of stuff. So, it was English Muffins every morning in the tray and I now quickly discovered to my (initial, at least) delight that he has many friends! And they like to play and fight over the English Muffins, wheeling and screeching about. I couldn’t keep enough English Muffins in the house, and it was getting expensive, so I began to experiment with other foods; anything left over from my meals seemed to be just fine and I found out that my many new friends had taken up residence upon my rooftop and even the surrounding rooftops, seemingly waiting for me to appear. While they waited they decorated the area with big white splotches with brown squiggles in them.

The birds had long since shattered the straps to the tray with their horseplay and so the tray was on the ground, having taken a beating from their pecking, scratching and fighting whenever I threw some garbage out there. And great clouds of them began to appear on schedule and I now couldn’t keep up. One day, I just refused to offer anything, but the birds, late in the day after they were sure I was reneging totally, began to wheel about, screaming and attacking the window. It was a scary scene, and one that reminded me of some Alfred Hitchcock movie but I forget the name of it or what it was about. And so I rushed out there with orange peels and I also splashed some French Onion Soup on the ground. This kept them at least perplexed enough to give me a few moments to make a huge batch of Ramen Noodles, which are very quick to make, and I tossed that out there, noodle strings hanging everywhere, and that seemed to placate them.

That was a narrow escape. Things were getting out of hand. And now my big picture window looks like it was the victim of a drive-by shooting with a BB-gun. I needed a source of lots of food and I needed it now.

That’s how I discovered how many dumpsters there are in Gloucester. Man, they’re everywhere if you’re looking! I know every restaurant in town now, and can tell you that the black & whites love old pizza and, especially, french-fries. I dump five-gallon buckets of my harvest out onto the tray every morning and every evening and when there are a lot of french-fries in there, it can get quite dangerous.

Getting enough food takes a lot of time and so I had to quit my job. And lots of my friends and restaurant employees have noticed me in the dumpsters and are getting worried about me. I’m too embarrassed about how I’ve accidentally led those poor birds into some kind of dependent relationship upon me and so I just let my friends and all think I’m homeless and foraging for food. And, of course, I’ve started drinking again with all the stress of hunting garbage all day and those birds being angry with me so often when the buckets of garbage aren’t so top-notch that day. (Those birds are very particular in some ways. It’s funny. Someone should do a study on them.) Anyway, I’m so tired that by the end of the day I rarely shower or change my clothes. Sometimes I’ll be going through bags at the bottom of a dumpster and smelly juice of something or other will splash on my clothes but I’ve gotten used to the smell and the stains.

I still have the apartment with the picture window though, cracked and crazed as it is. However, my savings are gone and my credit cards are approaching maxed-outness trying to keep up with rent while not working and so my friends and all those restaurant employees might soon be right about me after all.

You know. . . there are a ton of these birds I’m feeding every day now. Maybe they aren’t so rare. And their personalities leave something to be desired.

Maybe I shouldn’t have built a birdfeeder.

Am I crazy?