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.

Mauve Coelecanth Dialtone Making Irritate!

I have my garden planted...almost. I have my ornamental beds weeded...almost. And I have all my raised beds cleared and my stock potted up...yeah.
Still, it all looks better than it did a couple of weeks age. I'd show you a picture but my computer and my digital are no longer on speaking terms.

Got the tater man tucked in with a nice dogwood tree over him. I feel a lot better knowing that's finished, but still sad. It is officially referred to as the 'Opie Tree'.

It could be the 'Goonybird Tree' just as easily, but then I'd have to explain why to people and that would get tiresome and might well get me reported to the Health Department. The Goony Placenta went in the hole with the Tater, you see.

The Goonybird was born here in my front room three years ago, so that's how long I've had that thing sitting in my freezer. Every now and then I'd run into it while searching for something and think 'Yoiks!'
I tell you what, having it out of there takes a load off my mind. Why? Because I no longer have to worry about the Yummy Biker accidentally thawing it out and, yeah.
Oh my goodness yes; in this house? Believe me, that could happen. Those things look an awful lot like a liver, and while we don't do liver we Do do liver pate' on special occasions. To a German man who gets high regularly, this special occasion can often be 'Friday'.

I have to tell you that when I was unwrapping it from the plastic under the faucet it did smell disturbingly delicious...like fresh steak.
I mean, son of a freakin' double yoiks, y'all. That bastard went into the hole double mother fast. Gaaaaaaah. Why take chances? I mean, we are bikers.

Back when I had the Stainless Steel Amazon, there was a product for sale in the 'alternative lifestyle' new baby catalogues called, and I shit thee not, 'Placenta Helper.' My midwife recommended it to me. Said she'd attended several births already where this delicious stir-fry product had been served up to all those present afterwards. Hey! thanks for coming! Have a heapin' helpin' of human birthing detrius!
What kind of wine would you serve with that?

Furthermore, what kind of friends decide to make a social gathering out of you grunting and screaming for eight hours and then fall on the afterbirth like a mob of hyenas? Does the addition of dehydrated onion flakes and noodles somehow make this any less bizarre?

There are limits to how far one should take this 'natural' stuff, and that limit should by rights be reached right at the point where 'natural' contacts 'frying up hazardous medical waste'.

Theres a better alternative, folks. Buy a nice little tree.
Does it work? The new little dogwood we planted just broke blossom three weeks early.

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I will be back commenting and visiting you all soon, but my darlings, the sun is shining and...