All the Little Birdies on J-Bird Street, Love to Hear the Robin Go Tweet, Tweet, Tweet

This weekend while visiting my sister for her 30th birthday party, a loud knocking noise woke me up from my sleep. At first I tried to ignore it, and then I thought to myself, perhaps someone got locked out and I should go check and let them in. Of course, most of my thinking was under the pretenses of "this is NOT my house", "this is NOT my responsibility", and "if I don't know the person that I am looking at through the window, I am screaming and calling the cops". Anyway, I looked around, and found nothing. I then glanced at my phone and noticed it was 6:30 am, so likely no one else was up to even have gotten locked out. Suddenly however, I saw the culprit. Outside of my sister's kitchen window a robin was repeatedly banging its' head against his reflection. I am not sure if this robin was psychotic, or perhaps it thought it was a woodpecker (in the same way my 5 pound dog thinks he is a Rottweiler), but I have never in my life seen a robin act that crazy.

When my sister woke up, I told her about p.b.(this stands for psycho bird), to which she replied "I FREAKING HATE. THAT. BIRD". Clearly, I had missed the boat on being the first to notice this crazy behavior, and was soon told that this bird had been terrorizing for weeks. Apparently, it has gotten so bad that my sister called animal control hoping that they would come to get rid of the robin (the same way they do an opossum), to which they replied "we do not remove birds", and "no you cannot kill it", and proceeded to suggest safe methods of "robin removal", all of which she has followed. Method 1: put streamers on all of your windows so that the robin will no longer be attracted to its' reflection. This method, although it led to many questions of whether my sister's red outdoor streamers (which looked more like AIDS ribbons) were decorations for Cinqo de Mayo or her birthday, worked successfully. Well, it worked on all her windows, except the kitchen (as the kitchen gets no wind and p.b. is not thwarted by limp streamers). Method 2: Put (I am forgetting the exact substance but it had the same look and consistency as) petroleum jelly on the windows. In this method, the bird will taste the jelly, not like it, and stop banging himself against the window. This suggestion...was a lie (animal control revenge perhaps?). Not only did the bird repeatedly bang onto the exact spot with the jelly, but he may have actually liked it (as this was where on the window he caused the most damage).

Angry at the failure of animal control, and our inability to kill the bird (seriously, it is not like that they are endangered... we saw like 10 on our 30 minute run), as a family we then brainstormed new ideas of how to get rid of p.b. While the most effective plan may have been to put up fake owls to scare him off, my favorite one by far included opening the window, trapping the bird beneath a blanket, and "driving him off to an undisclosed location far away so that he couldn't find his way back". Yes, we actually made up an elaborate plan to kidnap the robin. Though in my lifetime I always thought robins were pretty and hard to find in the "ooo look I just saw a robin" sort of way, I am no longer a fan. Screw you and your fake woodpecker self for waking me up and wreaking havoc on my sister's house. We will get you someday p.b... because...in the words of my sister "we do not negotiate with terrorists".