It's Never Too Late...

To Listen to the Birds

Birds are such sought after creatures that they have a whole society of human beings who devote their lives to watching them. There are stores for bird lovers, books for bird lovers, trips for bird lovers, clothes for bird lovers, and special bird watching binoculars for bird lovers.

I'm not a bird lover. I'm not even a bird admirer. I think birds are kind of gross, especially crows, pigeons, and vultures. And don't forget seagulls! YUK! Birds are friggin scary too, just thank of Mr. Hitchcock's famous movie!

I haven't had too many positive experiences with birds.

I had a bird poop on me once. I was a little girl playing on the playground at school, and a bird shit on my shoulder. I wore dried up bird feces on my shoulder until my dad came to pick me up that day. The bird poop incident obviously scarred me because that memory crossed my mind several times years later when we were planning our outdoor wedding. Wouldn't it be horrible if a bird flew over me the instant I said "I Do," and it pooped all over my wedding dress?

When I was a teenager, we had two parrots. Not at the same time, thankfully! This was a seriously bad idea that spawned from one of those stuffed parrots you could buy at toy stores. Do you remember those? When you turned it on, you could say something to the bird and it would repeat it and blink its eyes. My dad got one for some reason, and it made him think he wanted a live bird that he could train to talk. It didn't take our family very long to realize that training a bird to talk isn't all that cool when bird speak comes with squawking, squealing, and skank. Our second skanky parrot named Smoky had an anxiety disorder, which caused him to pull out his feathers. For some reason, we kept him in the dining room! Mom, if you are reading this, maybe you can explain why! So here we were, the proud owners of an axious feather-pulling bird who spit out his food all over our linoleum floor and pooped from his perch every night as we sat down for family meals.

When Michael and I moved to Australia, I was shocked at all the wild cockatoos and cockatiels in Melbourne. They outnumbered the students at the university I attended. Back home, we would pay hundreds for these squawking monsters, and they were everywhere for the taking. I'm glad I didn't get pooped on because these are some big birds! We had a few cockatoos that perched themselves outside our window, and as pretty as they are, you would think God would have given them a beautiful voice to go with their looks. Think of the worst hacking, screaching noise you have ever heard and times it by 100 decibels!

Though I'm not a fan of birds, I can see where Mr. Lindsay is going when he says It's Not Too Late to Listen to the Birds. There is a beauty to many of them, and I do find myself appreciating the sound of birds in the early days of spring because I know it means that the world is finally coming alive again. But my bird love quickly ends there. Let's just say, I don't think I'll become a bird watcher any time soon.