Givin' bird the bird

I have a fear of birds.

This fear started about three years ago, when, in the span of three days, two birds made their way into my house. We use a large window as a dog door so the dogs can go in and out as they please, but that also lets said birds come in. I don't know why they would choose to come in, but they did.

The first one ended up on my curtain rod in my bedroom. I closed the door and called Adam at work and made him come home to take care of it. Sadly, he shot it with a BB gun. Ok, maybe I'm not so sad about it, but I do hate to see any kind of animal die.

Probably the saddest thing was that Adam put it in a plastic bag and in the trash, ON TRASH DAY AFTER THE TRASH MAN HAD ALREADY COME. I made him take it out and throw it in the woods, because honestly, a dead bird in the trash can, even though it's outside, creeped me out and I figured a stench would eventually emanate from it.

Three days later, I woke up to hear birds singing. Not outside-there was another one in the house. He was in the kitchen, up on top of the cupboard. I got the BB gun out, but it took me awhile to get up the courage to shoot at it. I fired three times, and missed all three times. I think I probably missed on purpose, but hell, my shot group was TIGHT.

I had Adam on the phone, begging him to come home, and the screen open. It was that bird's lucky day that he decided to fly out the door to freedom.

Since then, I have hated birds. I went out back after this debacle and hacked the shit out of the tree where the birds liked to hang out. My backyard looked like tree limbs fell out of the sky and blanketed every square inch within the fence. It did make really good firewood for the firepit though.

My most recent hatred is of hummingbirds. Yeah, they're cute and all, but they scare the shit out of me when I'm sitting on the porch and all of a sudden they're right there in my face, buzzing their wings. I figured out they scare me because here in the South, we have bugs bigger than hummingbirds, no kidding. So I always think it's a huge-ass bug trying to attack me.

Go ahead, laugh at me, because everyone else does. Doesn't bother me, because I readily admit it's stupid.