Tabatha Deans

BIRD-BRAINED BURGLARS
It was bound to happen. I guess living in a city with so many people eventually my sacred 300 square feet of space will be violated. It happened yesterday. I left home around 8 a.m., headed to Civic Center Park to man the beer booth to raise money for the VOICE. I closed my window closest to the fire escape, just in case it rained. I always leave the window next to my bed open about a foot, it faces the building next to us and without some ventilation the apartment gets unbearably stuffy.
After ten hours standing in the sun, slinging beer and making new friends, I returned home to immediately find that my apartment was not how I had left it. Papers had been knocked off my desk and were scattered about the room, a half-empty package of Pop-Tarts had been knocked off the table, leaving crumbs and chunks all over the carpet, and a throw pillow I left on my chair was now on the floor.
Spooked at realizing unknown person had been in my apartment, I immediately checked to see if my computer was missing, it being the only thing of value I own. It sat undisturbed on my desk. Then I realized the only place a person could hide would be in the bath tub, behind the shower curtain, but the bathroom door was open and the shower curtain was drawn back to allow my laundry to dry that was draped over the rails. No stranger there. Confused I stood and looked around. The door had been locked when I came in, but I never lock the deadbolt, so I guess it would have been just as easy for someone to lock it on their way out.
Then I noticed what looked like a spot of lotion of the brown, fuzzy blanket on the foot of my bed. I know I hadn’t left it there, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what kind of burglar would leave lotion behind. I stood and stared, still baffled. The more I stared at the offending stain, the more I began to notice a pattern around it. A very distinct pattern, which left indents all across the fuzzy blanket. A straight, three-pronged footprint kind of pattern, the kind birds leave. I looked at the stain again. Sure enough, it wasn’t lotion, it was bird poop. I scanned the room again, and from the looks of the other spots of poop it was obvious there was more than one bird, and they had partied it up in my absence.
The footprints covered nearly every inch of my bed, (Luckily the poop only hit the throw blanket at the foot.) I began to laugh, a little nervously, as I pictured one of them perched on the back of my chair, knocking the pillow to the ground. Another scoring the half-eaten Pop-Tart, and still another jumping up and down on the remote controls in an attempt to watch my borrowed copies of Parks and Recreation. Yup, the birds had had a grand party, and I had some cleaning up to do.
And just as I began the task of post-party recovery, barely able to believe what I was seeing, a pigeon landed on my window sill. Much like the kid who arrives at the party after the parents have already come home and busted it, he looked at me with sheer guilt in his eyes.
“Get, go, bad bird!” I snapped at him. He looked at me with his little bird eyes, challenging me. I shut the window and he flew away, but I suspect I haven’t seen the last of the avian hooligans…

June 4, 2012 - Posted by Tabatha Stewart | Uncategorized