I know, I have no knack for storytelling. I do in my head, but when it comes time to put it in writing, all creativity and excitement I had for the telling just disappears. So, work with me here and embellish at your will, because, trust me, you will never be able to do the true story justice, no matter how freaky you imagine this scenario. And, yes, this story is true.
When I awoke today and had the bird dream in my head, I remembered the day I was a real hero to another bird. A living bird. With wings. Flapping wings. A caught food, flapping wings, it's body beating around as it tried to free itself. I was fucking horrified. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I've had more spelling in my life where I've found myself unemployed than I care to admit. Oh, that's a lie. Some of my jobs have absolutely sucked. I've walked out, I've been fired, I've been through it all. During this particular bump in the road, I was fortunate to be living with my boyfriend in his quaint house in the middle of nowhere, yet right next to Highway 76. The same damned highway I grew up next to. I don't think I've ever lived more than 10 miles from I-76 in my entire life. How strange is that?
So, I'm unemployed, sitting at my makeshift outdoor paradise (a table made out of a copper wire spool and a fake tiki umbrella from Big Lots) and I hear the squawking and banging, just like in the dream. But it's closer. And I'm afraid of birds. This ain't no damned dream and I'm not a damned rock climbing super goddess.
My mom taught me at an early age about her fear of birds. They flwp flwp flwp sound they make when they are coming toward you and how you have no control over where they go. To duck when they come. For me, this fear has passed to all flying things. Moths, bees, flies, birds. They scare the bejesus out of me. Mind you, if I find a broken or hurt flying thing, I will do anything in my power to save it. But when it's flying, I'm scared to death.
So, there I was in my paradise (it happened to be about 100 degrees that day) and I heard the bird. The distressed bird. I tracked it down to one of the jury-rigged columns on our quaint porch. My boyfriend's ex-wife's husband took the cheap way around everything and the columns on our porch were empty fiberboard. The boyfriend, god bless him, tried to keep birds from nesting in them by stuffing the top with plastic bags.
The bird thought either a) Yay! Those bags keep the wind out of our nests, or b) Yay! More shit to make nests with! So, birds still made nests in every single column we had. In this particular column, there was a bird banging around.
Heart pounding, I ran to the garage and got a screwdriver and disassembled the cheap ass column. Inside was a crow (blackbird? what's the difference?) with a plastic bag wrapped around it's leg. In essence, this bird was now a lethal weapon out of a horror movie.
I made a half-assed attempt to move close to the bird, thinking I could calm it down (so wrong) and grab the bird, and rip the bag and set it free. Ha hahahahhahhaaaaaa. I was squealing like a fucking pig at the top of my lungs as I tried to get close to this flying, banging burst of unhappy feathers. If we had close neighbors, I have no doubt they would have called the police.
I also had no doubt that I had to save this bird. When I next stepped outside, I had on my boyfriend's motorcycle helmet (100 degrees), his motorcycle gloves, a step stool and a pair of kitchen shears in my hands. With sweat dripping down my face, deafening screams inside the helmet and 15 minutes of arduous labor while I tried deftly to slice the bag (with my eyes closed) and not stab the bird, I fought valiantly to rescue him. All of a sudden - HE WAS GONE! I have no idea what I did, or how it happened, but I saved it!
And, somehow, that tweeting bird from last night brought all of this back to my head.
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