The Suicidal Bird.

Birds arent known to be very bright, hence the derogatory term, “Bird-Brain.” But few birds could be as stupid as the one that haunts my bedroom window.

For one thing, he’s got the wrong window. A few years ago, this same bird found our balcony ledge and taunted my father with annoying high-pitched squeals and squawks that werent the trilling and twee bird-songs you read about in books and watch in Disney movies. My father spent his weekends chasing this moronic tuneless bird from balcony to balcony, and spent many a Friday phone call telling me in extensive detail how this bird tortured his days. Finally, the bird ruffled his offended and unwanted feathers, and left.

He returned seeking revenge upon my father however, and unfortunately for the bird-brain, he’s got the wrong bedroom window. He bypasses my parents room completely, and perches on my window ledge at 4-something am to squeak and squawk his way to glory. I have thrown things at him. I have sworn at him. I have promised to haunt him after he kills me of sleep deprivation. I have lunged at him in futile efforts to throttle him. I have even tried explaining to him (being woken up before dawn can make a person do stupid things) that he’s got the wrong window, and that my father is sleeping blissfully at the NEXT window, but he’s squawking so loudly, he doesn’t hear me.

True to schedule, he appeared at 4am on the dot on my balcony ledge, only today, the idiot was doing something different. He was perched right on the edge of ledge, and after a few loud and plaintive squawks, he was looking down longingly. Let it be noted that I live on the 11th floor. For many minutes, his squeaks tinged with desperation, he inched closer and closer to the ledge of the balcony, looking upwards and downwards, finally focusing straight down.

There can be two reasons for the moron’s odd behavior. The first being, he’d forgotten how to fly. Which I doubt, considering he’d navigated himself smoothly to my ledge in the first place. The second, more plausible option, is that he was trying to commit suicide, forgetting that out of all the various ways a bird could commit suicide, flinging itself off an 11th storey ledge isn’t one of them.

My point? WHY would a bird, even one as idiotic and unattractive as this one, want to die? Why would anything with wings, and the ability and option to soar at will, want to die? The number of times I have stared out the sky and longingly wished I could soar into foreign cities and strange places to forge new identities and craft new lives are endless. This bird, if he’s a creative one (which I doubt) could go to Spain and be a Pedro. He could fly to France and be a poetry-spouting bird. He could fly to New York and perch on Madam Liberty. He could do (not that he deserves it) everything that Ive wanted to do my entire life.

He did try to jump off my balcony. He failed, obviously. Because the ungrateful doorknob has wings, that subconsciously flapped and made him soar into the sky, which he looked almost sad about, as he let out a sad quiet squawk and flew away.

I don’t know when I’ll see him again. While I hope I never do, I’m fairly positive he’ll be back to his tunelessly painful self in a few days. And this time, instead of attempting to kill him myself, or watch him try to do the same, I might just tell him the numerous reasons he has for living.