Thursday, May 17, 2007

Recalcitrant Green Muskrat Dual Exhaust: Have Destroy!

Every year around this time, as I'm lying in bed in the dark of the night listening to them march around up in the attic I am moved once again to hold forth on the utter lackwittedness of starlings.

What the fuck are they doing up there? Are they looking for Amelia Earhart? And why, at two o' mother-butt-huffing A of the M!!?? Go to bed already! You are not owls; you are not smart enough to be owls. It's night, ya little bastards!!!

I blame the parents. Actually I should blame myself but I know better than to live in an attic; I live downstairs where the electrical outlets are. Theoretically I could block the entry hole. But it would help if the space provided were shaped more like a fat broad and not a series of diminishing triangles, bristling with rusted nails and coated with dehydrated ass.

Normally I am tenderhearted when it comes to Gods lil' critters, but I have no sympathy for these things. Starlings are like runaway robots...originally programmed to perform a few basic tasks: eat, crap, and scream- but they've run out of the range of the remote or something and they just continue to mindlessly perform these activities like overwound toys until they get flattened by a car. They'll pick in the grass (for what; worms? seeds? Viagra?) and just automatically continue on, reach the cement driveway, continue picking all the way across the cement, run into the edge of the cement, fall off, continue picking, stand up, pick pick pick, on into the tall grass.....closer and closer to where the neighbors cat has been openly sitting in utter bemusement all this time as lunch wanders right up to it's paws. This is the only animal stupid enough to just stand in the middle of the sidewalk and be run over by A BABY STROLLER, yo.

Even a baby chicken has the sense to stay close to the nest. Nature has told it that it is a young and inexperienced birdie, and it listens. Not the starling. As soon as it finds it's sea legs it's careening off in all directions, tripping over itself, falling off branches, forgetting to flap it's wings in mid-flight and falling out of the air, wandering into my garage, trying to eat cigarette butts, and falling asleep in the middle of the street.

This probably explains why at 2 a.m. they're roaming around my attic. That and the fact that the nest up there is the size of a bale of hay all spread out, and growing. With one single, small bird-butt-sized cup in the middle of it! There's a whole lot of real estate up there covered with dried hay and chicken feathers and what seems to be coyote crap full of hair, so it all probably looks kind of nest-ish...particularly to something with no more brain than, say, a toe. So you gotta figure day; night; it's all the same. If only they'd grab a goddamn clue, though! It's night! It's an attic! No comic books! Nothing to eat!

Nothing but other baby starlings from years past, that is. Oh goodness gracious yes, Mathilda. Having spent the night pinballing around the rafters instead of sleeping like normal birds, they finally wind down, get tired, fall asleep wherever they happen to be...and then the sun rises, the day heats up and a couple hours later you have slow-baked Tiny Chicken In The Rough. When I find them, they're perfect skeletal vignettes, tucked in a little ball, head under a wing, surrounded by pinfeathers and their own crapped-out remains. (Which is the fate I would have met had I remained in contact with my family of origin but that's another post. ahem.) My home... a warm and inviting place to raise a family situated picturesquely below a hideous graveyard of avian cannibalism.

The first brood of baby starlings has finally died. This year they wound up in my porch roof, right over the front door, which has perfumed the air with the welcoming aroma of putrefying baby bird.

Nothing daunted, Dad starling is out front on the phone line, screaming, twirling his wings and crapping on pedestrians trying to attract another mate. Just like that old saying 'If at first you don't succeed, completely fail to notice.'
Kinda like the Bush Administration.

24 comments:

  1. Perfection! Just like the Bush administration indeed.

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  2. Anonymous1:55 PM

    WAGH! That was brilliant, even before the punchline.

    You can thank that asshole Eugene Schieffelin for the starling - it's indigenous to Europe, but he decided y'all needed'em over there, and they've been threatening native bird species ever since. Yet another triumph of 19th-century "science." I guess we sent Europe a thank-you note with the gray squirrel...

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  3. I had wasps in my attic last year they weren't noisy but they did squeeze their way through the sunken spot light in the bathroom ceiling and sting anyone foolish enough to be using the throne - I saw many more bare arses than I wanted last year!

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  4. Oh! The punchline!

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  5. Well, maybe if the nest gets big enough it will act as insulation?

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  6. no, no. the phrase is "if at first you don't succeed, try until you do suck seed." (it sounds better than it reads.)

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  7. Over here we suffer from bats in the attic. It's illegal to disturb them.

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  8. FN, you are totally and completely one of my most favorite reads. You have a way of describing things that is hystercial.

    Bravo!

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  9. Anonymous9:23 PM

    at least they're not in your chimney. we used to wonder why they chose to go down such a long tunnel to nest, but we finally figured out they liked to live dangerously.

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  10. I just found kittens in our attic.

    Mama Cat is still MIA...she knows I am after her.

    All I wanna do is hug and love her--I Swear!

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  11. I like Starlings I learned from a TV show they can fly at 45 MPH over hedgerows, I have no idea how fast they can go over streets though the show wasn't very clear on that.

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  12. Anonymous2:53 AM

    probably dependent on the speed limit.

    I like starlings too (though I might not if they were nesting in my attic), I love the rainbow cast of their feathers, just like oil on water.

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  13. You know, I am really identifying with those stupid, stupid starlings.

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  14. Suspects Beast is a starling in human form
    Hangs head in shame
    ****falls asleep in road***

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  15. Brilliant - completley and utterly brilliant!

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  16. I'm just off outside to crap on a few pedestrians, I could do with another mate.

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  17. oh stop ya whingin'! we got frisky possums in our roof, running from the farside of the bedroom ceiling to the other then flinging themselves out onto the palm trees. back and forth back and forth back and effin forth. then they get the horn and start mating in the tree right by the window, which sounds like someone in the final stages of emphysema, and THEN just as i fall asleep, the friggin parakeets descend and start screeching!!

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  18. I guess it's just as well they're so stoopid. I mean, there's an awful lot of them.

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  19. Starlings are definitely a bit loop-de-loop. A friend was telling me about some which suddenly decided to fly down the chimney in his house for no apparent reason, emerging in a cloud of soot in the living room.

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  20. bwahahahaha this cracked me up totally. Starlings sound like a total hoot - i bet they are the life and soul of bird parties...i'm gonna go get me some pet starlings and feed them ciggie butts.

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  21. Anonymous7:46 AM

    Very successful for such dumb beings- sometimes there are 30 million pairs in the UK - more than there are people...I guess they are just a generic bird shaped bird - ofthe kind nature came up with when she couldn't be bothered to invent a Boat-Billed Heron or a Ptarmigan or an Ostrich...

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  22. I think you should take a trip to this blog http://openthecurtains.blogspot.com
    and read, first the post "now for something completely different" May 17 and then the comment thread.Do not attempt to imbibe any beverages while reading!

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  23. I have a little mouse that likes to run across the floor late at night. Little does he know I have a sling shot and a rock...

    I'm waiting on the right opportunity.

    Yep.

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  24. "What the fuck are they doing up there?"

    I suspect they have a meth lab.

    That would explain the general ditziness, the tweaking, and the offspring neglect/abuse.

    We have starlings, here, too. The sparrows are constantly kicking their shit in.

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