Monday, February 25, 2013

Dear Birds at My Work

I am not certain what I have done to anger you, or what malevolent spirit has taken you over and used you as a warning that terrible things are afoot, but I am asking you kindly to please put an end to this madness.

This all began about a week ago.  Normally, during the busy season at my job, I will sit in my office in the back and get paperwork done.  In the winter, when business is slower and I am covering shifts normally staffed by my employees, I sit behind a reception desk.  I have a nice stool that I situate with a view of glass doors.  Beyond those glass doors, about fifty feet away, is the Chesapeake Bay.  Last Monday, I sat there, enjoying what was most certainly a thought provoking novel, and most definitely not erotica, while I waited for the phones to ring.  My deep pondering over the novel was rudely shattered with a loud THWAP!  Startled, I looked up, expecting a coworker had sneaked up to the desk and tried to scare me.  With no one in sight, I returned to my reading, only to hear THWAP! again a few minutes later. 

My attention was piqued.  A hard target search of the lobby revealed no one.  About to start putting stock into the ghost rumors my coworkers had been floating, I turned to walk back to the desk and spied something outside the door.  Two birds were on the cement.  Without going into an unnecessary, albeit hilarious Monty Python routine, these birds were dead.  To be fair, I had cleaned up several dead animal bodies at work over the years, the worst being a rotting stingray that had washed ashore, so two birds were no big deal.  I put on some rubber gloves, picked them up, then realized I couldn't walk them to the dumpster and still hear the phones if they rang.  On cue, the phone's shrill mating call erupted.  I don't want to say I panicked, per se, but without thinking, I reeled back and chucked both birds as hard as I could out into the Bay.  I stared for a minute as the little bodies were swallowed by the murky abyss, then ran inside away from accusatory eyes.  Little thought was given to it for the rest of the day.

Through the next few days, more and more birds would fly into the windows, killing themselves for what I could only think was a closer vie of me before the died.  Each time, I would don my gloves, and each time, I took my cue from earlier and flung them to Davy Jones.  Since last week, I have given over a dozen birds burial at sea, including three today. We have put fake cutouts of hawks on the windows to try to scare the birds before the hit the windows.  This seemed to have worked for a few days, but now the killing have intensified.

If you want a sacrifice, avian overlords, only tell me who I should smite, and they shall be smote.  Just stop this kamikaze crap, because I am not relishing the explanation I will have to give when someone finally catches me chucking a dead bird into the Chesapeake Bay, making my own little Goldfinch Ganges River. 

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a nasty curse, sir. I'd invest in a silver crucifix, several cloves of garlic, a piece of the True Cross, an ash stake, one of those fortune-telling machines like in "Big," a shotgun, a few months' supply of C-rations, and some goddamned chocolate syrup.

    You know.

    For all the ice cream.

    ReplyDelete

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