On either side of our driveway are two large trees. On the right is a sycamore tree that towers above our two story house. On the left is a sweet gum tree, tall for its species, with an impressive canopy. One thing I have always liked about this arrangement is the shade they give our principle vehicles. With the garage being filled with kayaks and my baby – Li’ Blue – aka a certain Mazda MX-5 Miata, the other cars cannot find a home inside. Of course if you are going to have tree limbs over cars, you will have the occasional avian calling card on your vehicle. This has been an infrequent and bearable problem… until this year. Suddenly, there has been an incredible amount of bird droppings on both vehicles.
Suspecting tree growth that was inviting more birds to roost over the cars, I grabbed my pole trimmer and went to work on our two specimen trees. I tried to trim strategically, with much affection, begging the forgiveness of our wooden sentinels. However, this work seemed to do nothing to decrease the impressive amounts of guano hardening to the consistency of seasoned concrete on our automobiles. Even after repeated trips to car washes, much of this substance remained, appearing as streaks dripping from our vehicle roofs, on our windows, and especially on the side view mirrors – both sides, both vehicles.
A few weeks after my barbering of the trees, I had a project in the garage that kept me there for a few days with the garage door open. It was then that I noticed a robin red breast reciting Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven while perched on the luggage rack of Señora’s Subaru. I shooed him/her away and of course the foul fowl decreased his payload before going airborne. How appropriate that their scientific name is Turdus migratorius.
Over the next few days I noticed this robin – you would need to be a robin to tell one from another – perching on the mirrors of both our vehicles, on the Tacoma roof occasionally, and having a strong preference for the roof rack of the Outback. I vaguely wondered if we had a narcissistic robin due to the amount of time it spent on the mirrors. However, very few animals recognize their own image, and I am reasonably sure Turdus migratorius is not one of them. Perhaps they thought they had found their soul mate in the car’s mirrors and windows.
While I have been called a birdbrain in the past, I still cannot think like a bird. What I finally decided was this feathered felon was seeking vengeance. We all know the early bird gets the worm and in our yard, in the gardens, a feast can be found for early risers. However, we have, on more than one occasion, filled a container full of earthworms to utilize as offerings to His High Holiness, Mr. Bass. “Poach in my garden,” our Hitchcockian bête noire was thinking, “and I will adorn your car…repeatedly.” That has got to be it, what else could it be? Is that the echo of the screams of Tippi Hedren that I hear?
And so it goes.
Interesting