Me and the Birds

I’ve never been an “animal” person. I had no personal pet as a child; we just had a series of badly behaved dogs that my father would bring home under the cover of implausible stories about caring for the animal while a work colleague was on vacation or something of the sort. I vaguely remember a couple of yappy beagles that were somehow going to become hunting dogs, but only ended up in the backyard annoying our neighbors and my long suffering mother who was already trying to manage four kids under ten.

I don’t know that I have a Spirit Animal. If I do, I imagine it would be a dire wolf, like the Stark children had in Game of Thrones. Yeah, fierce and loyal. That would work for me.

I’ve never been attracted to any animals, but I have recently had a couple episodes where one has been attracted to me. And by attracted, I mean relentlessly pursuing. As I write this, at 6:30 am, the most recent has just appeared on my deck for the fifth straight day, right on cue. A red winged blackbird. Banging on my window. And, no, it’s not his reflection he’s after; I’ve closed the blinds and even hung paper on the window to keep him from killing himself.

Photo by https://unsplash.com/@varrak

But let me back up a bit. Two years ago, almost to the day, I woke to the sound of hammering that seemed to be coming from my third floor studio. Curious, as one would be, I climbed the stairs and saw a cowbird on the deck pecking at the sliding glass window. I told him it was too early for that kind of noise, shooed him away and went back downstairs to bed. And then he started on the glass door on that floor.

Photo by https://unsplash.com/@jcotten

That cowbird pecked on my glass doors and windows for ten days. He knew when I was upstairs and when I was downstairs. I shooed him, I hollered at him, I bargained and pleaded with him to go away, or at least be quiet, but he was relentless. It was hard to believe he had any beak left after so many days of it.

Then I did what any normal person would do and consulted my best woo-woo friend, writer, teacher and psychic Deb Bowen, whose newsletter is published here on Substack, to get her take on all this. As I suspected she would, Deb suggested that I accept the damn thing into my life, tell it that I was ready to listen, and await the message. Can you feel my eye-roll here? But, I had run out of strategies, so, ok, I did it and I’ll be damned if she wasn’t right.

I did it the way I do best and started to paint the bird to better understand it and my animosity toward it. After another couple days, it became clear to me what all the “pecking at me” was about, or, rather who it was about and what I needed to do about it. And then the cowbird flew off, never to be seen again.

This past week, this guy appeared.

He perched on one of the outdoor dining chairs I just refinished and proceeded to poop all over it. Which ticked me off. I shooed him away. He came back. He has been battering the window, actually hanging on the screen (!) and, yes, following me upstairs and down for five. long. days. He greets me in the morning, watches me in the studio and while I prepare dinner. Seriously, I’m not making this stuff up. My husband (definitely not a woo-woo guy) will attest to it. The bird is absolutely following me around. Having learned my lesson once before, I’ve already accepted his presence and am open to whatever message he is bringing, but so far, it’s crickets.

Today, I’ll start painting him to see if that might open up a channel. I’m keeping my mind open, practicing patience and hoping a heavy rain will take care of all the bird poop.