I don't like birds.

I recently found a treasure trove of some of my old essays and pieces so I'm cherry-picking the good ones and re-posting them. This essay is from two years ago, when my mom and my brother visited Savannah for a week and I got back and wrote this about how much I hate birds. (I hate them.)


My recent trip to the beach last week triggered my fear of birds. AGAIN. When we were leaving and we got back into the car, a billion blackbirds flocked to the fence posts in the parking lot and simultaneously began squawking and flapping their wings at me. They were so close that I could see their frantic little glassy eyes zeroing in on me and one of them flew near my head, so I screamed and covered my face with my hands while trying to dive into the front seat of the car. I then slammed the door and sat there, trembling, for a good five minutes while more birds sauntered over and began pecking at the ground in front of the car. One of them was especially huge and had purple streaks in its wings like some disgusting, gigantic, cartoon caricature of a blackbird. I am shuddering and gagging just thinking about it.

BIRDS ARE EVERYWHERE. Birds are seriously the grossest things ever. For the past few days, there has been something creepy and disgusting on my bathroom floor that looks like it might have come from a bird or something, but I am not sure. it might just be dryer lint or a dead spider. It was not there when I left for Georgia, but I have been scared to go near it or touch it or even sweep it up because I cannot go near anything that looks like a bird.

WHY BIRDS SUCK:
- the disgusting flapping sound their wings make
- they have beady little eyes
- they are jittery and constantly flitting around
- their heads swivel
- their beaks are always jabbing or pecking
- they cheep at me
- they fly around and shit everywhere
- when they walk, their heads bob back & forth
- they have weird feet and talons
- they always fly at my face or windshield
- they sit in the trees near my window early in the morning and cheep some more
- they hover in the air

At least cats stay put on the ground where they belong and can't really go anywhere near your face unless they jump at you from a staircase (which has happened to me before). And dogs are the best. Dogs don't do unpredictable, scary things like fly at your face at a hundred miles an hour, screeching. I think that animals can tell when you don't like them, and birds and cats definitely do not like me. Luckily, most cats run away from me really fast when they see me, but birds are shitty and evil and narrow their eyes at me and then they suddenly take a dive at me. I hate how they have complete and total freedom to fly off of the ground and fly at your face or general torso vicinity.


I'm not sure if my fear of birds is rooted in my childhood or not. I have always just been scared of them. My mom loves Alfred Hitchcock movies and watched a lot of them when I was growing up, so it is possible that I may have inadvertantly watched The Birds as a child. I'm not sure, though, because I haven't seen that movie in years, mostly because I am really fucking scared of birds.

Love,
Caitlin


EDIT: Potential bird risis averted. My boyfriend picked the gross thing up off of my bathroom floor earlier. It turns out that it was really a gum wrapper stuck to a feather and some lint. I still hate birds.