I Get Burgled

I was burgled today, despoiled of my treasures before my very eyes. The robber left the floor ankle-deep in garbage, and also contrived to shit on the kitchen counter. As if that wasn't bad enough, he vomited all over the windows, beat me cruelly about the head, then escaped through the window.

The window?

On the nineteenth floor?

That's right, folks: I was robbed by a bird.

This is the second packbawky invasion I've had since I moved in here. I think it's because my apartment is one floor up from a certain ledge, which serves as a gathering point for the birds of the downtown area. Occasionally, one of them gets blown off course, and is swept in my window on the updraft. Last year, it was a Bewick's wren, which decorated my solarium with puke and bird lime. This time, it was a big, ugly, messy grackle, and it didn't have the decency to stay in one room.

I was sleeping when it first arrived. I don't know how long it was in here before I woke up, but it couldn't have been too long. I had my living burglar alarm to warn me--Stella was going berserk. She was plastered to the bars of her cage, rattling and screeching and pounding her tail. No-one could sleep through that din.

"Shut the fuck up!" I groaned.

"Skee! Skee! SKEEEEEEK!" screamed Stella.

"Skee! Skee! SKEEEEEEK!" screamed something else--something in the kitchen. I sat bolt upright, and noticed a drift of papers spread out on the floor.

"Man, Stella, what did you do?" (I didn't quite get it yet.)

Before I could twig to the situation, the grackle came steaming out of the kitchen, feathers puffed up in a fan. I yelped and ducked. It flapped around in circles, panicking. I chased it with the only weapon at hand: a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. The idea was to wave the bird into the solarium, so it would see the window and squeeze back out the way it got in. Unfortunately, the poor thing was completely addled with terror, and exhausted as well. It kept trying to land on things, but everything in my apartment is precariously balanced on something else, so its perches crumbled beneath it. Stuffed rats, plastic rats, and computer CDs hit the deck. That damn bird skittered and whirred across my desk, a little fluttering ball of destruction. The harder it tried to take off, the more its wings got snarled up in my stuff. It skated through a thicket of pens, scattering them to the winds. For a moment, it rained office supplies. I caught Giggerota's urn the instant before it would've shattered on the TV. At last, freeing itself from the desktop, the grackle sought refuge in the worst place imaginable: atop Stella's cage. Stella launched herself right at it, mouth open wide.

"No!" I shouted, lobbing the Pepto-Bismol at Stella. The grackle hurled itself skyward, hit the blinds, ricocheted, and careened straight into my face. I batted at it and made spitty noises. It beat at me and stuck its wings in my mouth. I abandoned the chase and gargled furiously with Listerine. After a moment's reflection, I rubbed mouthwash all over my face as well, and sprayed my hands with Lysol. Then my skin started itching, so I washed off all the Lysol and Listerine. I took off the shirt the bird had touched, and replaced it with a clean one.

By the time I'd done all that, the grackle was back in the kitchen. I started toward it, but the damn thing saw me coming. Before I could stop it, it had seized a twist-tie in its beak and made off out the window. I kid you not. The little motherfucker stole a twist tie. I probably saved it from violent disembowelment, throwing the bottle at Stella the way I did, and that's how it repaid me! Birds, I tell ya.

With the pest ejected, I surveyed the damage. It looked like a tornado had been, and a hurricane and a tsunami to boot, but nothing was actually damaged. Every light ornament and scrap of paper which had been on my desk was now on the floor, along with a treacherous scree of Coke cans. Birdshit had splattered the kitchen counter and run down the front of the oven in streaks. The solarium window had been vomited on. There were feathers in the bathroom and peckmarks in the soap.

I spent the next twenty minutes recluttering my desk and deshitting the kitchen. After that, I took a very long shower. I hope that grackle didn't give me some horrible bird disease. The last thing I need is, you know, aspergillosis, or whatever grackles have.

This should be the last birdie break-in for the foreseeable future: I've pulled the solarium window almost shut now. A hummingbird or a linnet might squeak in, if it was really determined, but we don't get too many of those round here.

Aside from that bird interlude, nothing much happened today. I worked. Stella bit my left foot. I fed her half a breadstick to distract her, and she hid it under the couch. It's still there--I can't reach it. I'll have to move the whole thing to get it out. Or maybe I can nudge it out with something...a stick, maybe. I haven't got a stick. Bugger.

I thought about the bird while I worked. It's bad luck to get a bird in your house. I had one last year, and I've been unlucky ever since. I mean, I wasn't spectacularly lucky before it came, either, but you never know with these things. Although, when you think about it, why is a bird bad luck, anyway? I know why it's unlucky to get a snake in: you could get bitten. But what's a bird going to do, flap at you? Wooooo. I tremble.

Anyway, I've got to get back to work now. Just wanted to write up the bird before I forgot all the details, all the smarmy things it did. Smarmy. I like that word. It is a good word...for birds.