Clareified

GONE TO THE BIRDS

For reasons that are not entirely clear, it’s dawn on a Saturday morning and I am in a fierce staring competition with the pigeon perched on my balcony ledge.
Under all rules of play, I have won.
She has broken from my gaze at least six times since I started counting. Her neck bends first left, then right. The wind ripples through her blue tinted breast feathers.
Now she struts away from my window completely, prancing half-way down the balcony ledge.
But, she comes back. Our eyes meet and the game is once again afoot.
She watches me as I furiously tap at the window – futilely attempting to scare her and her loud cooing away, so that I can get some sleep before the painters show up tomorrow morning. Correction. In four hours.
Still, she watches.
Now, I am straining to pull up the window – maybe I can yell her away.
It doesn’t budge. I yell anyway. And tap. Yell and tap. All the while never taking my eyes off of her. It.
She turns away again.
Dawn: 7 Stupid filthy dirty pigeon: 0.
Well, that’s not exactly accurate.
In fact, I may win every staring battle with this bird between now and when I sell this place to some hipster doofus for a million dollars, but the fact that she is there at all, signals that I have most definitely lost the war.
You see, ever since I’ve been Our lady of the Terrace, I have battled with the pigeons.
My mother suggested sprinkling cayenne pepper to get rid of them, then ammonia, then cayenne pepper flavored ammonia. To no avail. Every morning, moments after the first rays of the sun hit my eyes (because I haven’t yet figured out how to bring the blinds down), I hear them. Cooing. Then prancing and fluttering.
What was I thinking? My Panamanian raised mother, who now lives sans balcony in the East Coco Beach, is not going to help me get rid of my pigeon problem.
No, no. This was going to take something or someone bigger than my mom. A google times bigger.
Indeed, Mr. Google was chock full of ideas. A thousand dollar device that sends ultrasonic radio waves that send pigeon distress signals, some sodio-dicloraxide which goes for $50 a gallon, or a twenty dollar ceramic owl.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner.
The owl arrived today, er, yesterday.
I eagerly opened the box that would rid me of my problem.
There it was…a 22 inch, brown ceramic owl, with huge yellow eyes and a bobble head type spring for a neck.
Tell ya the truth, it was kinda freaky.
I ripped the plastic off and set it outside on my patio table.
That’ll learn those pigeons but good.
I ran quickly back inside, lest the owl decide to peck my eyes out for good measure.
Now, I wait.
I went back to my regular apartment life – my kitchen cabinet-less existence of eating take-out on my bed for want of a dining area or utensils
(how much do we hate our contractor? Lots and lots.)
Around six, as I chatted with Karol on the phone, I went to my home office to finally log out of my AOL thing, which has had been idling for like six days. I see something dart across my range of vision.
I SCREAM.
“What happened?” Karol asks on the other line.
“FUCK. That owl scared the shit out of me!”
“What owl?”
“I got the plastic owl thing to keep the pigeons away.”
“OK, let me get this straight. You got a plastic owl to scare away pigeons and, instead, you scared yourself?”
“It’s very creepy, bobbing around out there.”
“You need help. And quick.”
Shut it.
I closed my eyes, hit the computer’s power button (certainly no time or sight for logging out and proper shutdowns) and then closed the door behind me. Damn owl.
Which, of course, brings me back to my current staring contest with the pigeon perched on my balcony ledge.
While I am terrified of the bobbing, yellow-eyed owl sitting on my patio table, the pigeon seems, not only unfazed by the owl, but completely and utterly oblivious that its natural predator sits just inches away ready to attack at a moment’s notice.
And yes, I can hear Fisch’s voice saying “a ceramic owl? That’ll never work. These are city pigeons. They’ve never seen an owl,” in between puffs of Karol’s Marlboro lights.
But you know what? Whatever. Because as I watch the pigeon finally fly off into the sunrise, I surrender.
They can have the damn balcony, cause as long as that freaky ass owl is out there, I won’t be using it.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Saturday, March 25th, 2006 at 6:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.