The Bird

Usually when one returns to one's place of residence after a period of absence, whether one has been visiting one's hometown to enjoy the holiday season or on has been in a psychiatric institution to enjoy mental instability, one expects one's place of residence to be more or less the same. Sure, some dishes will have moved, the fridge will be filled with different sorts of foods, etc. One does not expect to walk into one's living room/kitchen area to see a caged bird sitting on the counter. However that is exactly what happened to me when I walked into my house in Sugarhouse after a period of absence, I'll leave it to you the reader to decide whether I was home for the holidays or recovering from a lapse in my mental faculties. Thats right, there was a bird, more specifically a White Bellied Caiques, in a cage that was occupying a good percentage of the counter space that I use to prepare food on a nightly basis. A living, breathing squawking bird. In a cage. On the counter. In the place that I live. Whaaaaaat?

Needless to say, I was not, and am not (as the owner of the bird has yet to relocate it), ok with the current situation. I don't like birds. On a good day I think that they are creatures, who look alright off in the distance, and who can fly which is pretty neat, as long as they don't get up in my bidness. On a bad day I think birds are dirty, ugly, stupid creatures who exist to fill their bellies with annoying bugs and seeds that need spreading and to fill my belly with their meat. On a really bad day I think that they are Satan's messengers that will one day band together and attack the human race in a relentless and merciless fashion. Thank you Hitchcock/Du Maurier. Why anyone would want to own a bird is beyond me. However, I can accept that there are people out there who don't mind keeping deranged psycho killers in waiting in their home. It's a personal choice, and people have the right to make it. As long as those people don't keep their winged rats ON MY COUNTER! Seriously, it's gross. I believe it is molting right now, and it isn't the neatest of eaters, or defecators. As a consequence I can't use my counter to do anything for fear of getting bird e coli or something. Also it's loud. Every morning as I stumble blearily up the stairs it greets me with a piercing noise that never fails to scare the bejeebers out of me. It has also been shrieking incessantly for the last 45 minutes. The walls are thin. It is annoying. I hate it.

Basically the point of this is to say, I don't like birds. I just don't. I really don't like birds in the place where I'm living. If however there has to be a bird in my place of residence I don't want the bird to be positioned where it renders my counter space unusable, and annoys the hell out of me. I want it in a private room where I don't have to see it, or think about it attacking me in the night. And if things don't change in the very near future either the bird or I is going to meet a very unhappy end.