For the past four or five days, the same woodpecker* has been making regular visits to a couple of our family room windows and banging his** beak ferociously against the glass in ten minute intervals. This happens multiple times over the course of the day mainly between the hours of asscrackofdawn-o’clock and waythehelltoolate-thirty.

I for one sort of enjoy watching the little bird expend so much energy on what I imagine (and hope) to be such utterly fruitless labor. True, the racket made is rather repetitive and annoying (which is a redundant description since noise + repetitive = annoying) but I figure any distraction from my usual daily routine of caffeine ingestion and internet surfing childcare and housework is a good thing. Keeps the ole brain alive.

Rob enjoys the birdwatching not so much.
As in Iamgonnablowthatgahdamnbird’sheadoff not so much.
And hence a Bird Death Mission has been set in motion.

I’ve tried and tried to appeal to Rob’s softer side saying “You CANNOT kill the woodpecker. He is obviously homeless and friendless and sees us in here interacting in our own little dysfunctional way and wants to be part of our family and besides the kids have fallen in LOVE with him.”

But to no avail.

And if only I could speak Avianese I would tell the little guy that his lifespan is about to be shortened to the approximate amount of time it takes Rob to remember to go by the Wal-Mart Supercenter for a tube of BB’s, so if I were a woodpecker I would knock that crap off because Rob already has the BB gun. But, alas, my high school only offered Spanish, French, and German and I already tried but he didn’t seem to understand my Francais.

Comment ca va?
Oui, ca va. Et toi?
Ca va, merci.

Anyway, gotta bolt. He’ll be back soon and I need to practice my Birdie Sign Language. And I hope to God that he gets it or else I really think it’s only a matter of time before I’m raking a pile of feathers out of the front flower bed.

And I hate doing yard work.

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* Rob emphatically denies that the bird in question is technically a woodpecker on the grounds that it isn’t blue and red and doesn’t make the requisite ha-ha-ha-HAA-ha! sound. Hard to argue with THAT sound logic.

** I’m taking license here to assume that the fowl in question is of the MALE persuasion because it is so very like a man to expend energy on utterly fruitless labor. Like trying to talk his wife into performing the occasional back rub. UTTERLY.FRUITLESS. Don’t waste your energy (Rob). ha-ha-ha-HAA-ha!