School Daze

I picked up my daughter, S, from elementary school the other day, and after she settled into her seat and took control of the radio, I asked her how the day went.

It is a ritual we have, one from which I should break free but always forget somehow when I see her face as she approaches the car. I know how the day went from the look upon her face, so asking her is superfluous. I should try a more focused but open ended approach, like what’s the weirdest thing that happened in the cafeteria, or who cried today in class. If I see a frown when she opens the door, though, I ask anyway, how was your day? She provides only two answers to this question: good or okay. Okay means that before we pull into the driveway, she will be crying, pushed to her breaking point by the struggles and tribulations of fifth grade.

Lucky, the other day she approached the car with a big smile on her face. “Good day, I see,” I said to her.

“Someone got married to a chocolate chip today at recess,” she said, and giggled.

“Did you say chocolate chip?” I asked.

“Yes, a fourth grade girl. It was a really big deal. She had been planning it all week.”

So many questions. Where to begin?

“Why was there a chocolate chip on the playground?” I asked. It seemed like a good place to start.

“She brought it from home. Some of the girls in her class were even bridesmaids. She wore a really fancy dress even.”

Did this child’s mother wonder why she was so dressed up for school? Oh wait, it was picture day. Duh. Clever move, bride of chocolate chip.

“Well, um, was it a beautiful ceremony?”

“It was lovely,” she said, smiling. “But the fourth grade boys made fun of her and made her cry.”

“I could see how a group of boys would tease her about that,” I commented.

“Wait, it gets worse. One of the boys ate her chocolate chip.”

“He ate her husband? That’s horrible, I guess. Was he tasty?”

S giggled. “But the girl was all upset.”

I liked how she didn’t use the girl’s name, as if to protect her anonymity.

“I’m sure she was. That was a very short marriage. Plus, she’s awfully young to be a widow.”

“Yeah, she cried and all the other girls yelled at the boy and then their teacher came over.”

“Well, what did she say?”

“The girl told her about the wedding and the boy eating a chocolate chip, but she said she didn’t even know how to punish him for that. So they all kind of walked away.”

“That’s a pretty weird story,” I told her. “Anything else interesting happen? Did you start a new unit in social studies?”

“Yes,” she said. “We are learning about the Dirty Thirties.”

I choked on my own spit. “Excuse me?”

“The Dirty Thirties. You know, the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl and stuff. That must be why they call it that,” she said.

I had to Google the Dirty Thirties when we got home. I didn’t believe that was a common expression that should be taught to elementary school children. But it turns out I was wrong. It might be Ken Burns’ fault; his documentary on the Dust Bowl referred to that time period as such, even though I and most people would think it was more about finding a way to make getting older sound sexier. But still, when S said it, I saw it more as “Drrrrty” and less about dust clouds. At least she didn’t say she was learning about cougars or twinks or trannies or anything.

Wait a minute, she did learn about “tran,” when she had a unit on stems in her reading class. When she studied all the stems, she wanted me to give examples of the stems in words. I kept forgetting she was more familiar with “transcontinental” than she was with “transsexual.” I did my best to contain myself.  I don’t do much better when they cover the solar system. Is there an adult alive who doesn’t at least smile inside when they talk about Uranus?

I’m going to miss the elementary school years. Next year, S will be in middle school, and her innocence will be figuratively stripped from her. She will know all the bad words and see some shit go down. Hell, she will see a police officer every day, one with a real gun who isn’t afraid to use it. She will see kids fight and cuss and make out and all the things I still can’t believe go on in a school in a nice area of town. So if the whole damn fourth grade wants to marry chocolate chips, I will be more than happy to drop off a bag of Nestle Chocolate Morsels. I’ll even throw in a case of Sugar Babies so they can all start families.

Dirty Thirties. Sheesh. Make this growing up thing slow down.

Bye Bye Birdie

I’m so tired of the haters of the world complaining about how horrible cats are. Ooh, they’re aloof and distant. Wah, they aren’t like dogs. Sob, they’re filthy disease carriers who make everyone and their unborn babies sick.  Boo, they are killing the songbirds of America. Well, cats might be standoffish, stubborn, and germ-ridden, but they aren’t the only danger to your backyard birds.

Yesterday, while I was preparing a delicious, healthy, and organic dinner for my family, I glanced out the window to the backyard and saw a squirrel eating something that did not look like an acorn. I stopped what I was doing and walked up to the window, along with Yoko, one of my cats. She hopped on the window sill and stared at the squirrel too. I watched him intently, as did Yoko, trying to figure out what he ate so voraciously.  Turns out it was a bird, limply dangling from his jaws as he gnawed its lifeless body. He twitched a bit, the squirrel, not the bird, before scampering up the tree to a perch, where he held the bird between his little squirrel hands and chowed down on that thing like a plate of ribs.

Why do things like this always happen when I am home alone, well, with just the cats? Late afternoon, no one is home, and the zombie apocalypse has begun in my back yard, starting with squirrels. Brains, brains, he must have been thinking, as he cracked open that bird’s skull with his powerful rodent teeth.

It’s not like this is the first time it’s happened. Well, maybe the first time I witnessed a squirrel eating a bird, but I have seen a chipmunk actually drag a still living bird from the patio into the yard to finish it off. What the fuck is going on in my back yard? Squirrels and chipmunks eating birds. Are all the animals back there rabid, or do they just enjoy some tasty wings? Maybe I should put out some celery and ranch dressing.

Most people think that squirrels are annoying because they eat all the bird seed put out in feeders, but I bet you didn’t worry about them eating the actual birds. One time, my sister LM found a dead squirrel inside a tube shaped bird feeder in her back yard. She felt badly for it, stuck in there trying to eat its fill of seed before it couldn’t find its way back out of the tube, got stuck, and died. Maybe, just maybe, that conniving little fucker was trying to pass himself off as so much bird seed. His fur was roughly the same color as millet and sunflower seeds, so it was actually a pretty good disguise. Perhaps his gluttony led to his death.

You know what’s a great appetite suppressant? Watching a squirrel eat a bird in your back yard. At least, for me it was. Yoko, on the other hand, looked like a starving child outside of a fancy restaurant. Being an indoor kitty, she eats the same dry food day in and day out, with the occasional bite of turkey or scrambled egg to add a little excitement to her otherwise dull life. And outside her window was the feline equivalent of a turducken being made before her eyes. Seed and insects inside of a bird inside of a squirrel? That’s some good eating, she must have been thinking.

 

The squirrel stopped a few times to climb higher in the tree, still holding the dead bird tight in its mouth so it could eat through the feathers to the soft parts inside. His squirrel mouth had a red ring around it; think little kids and spaghetti, or zombies.  And just like that, he had his fill, and dropped the bird carcass onto my patio, where most of it landed on a lounge chair, the ground below littered with bird bits and pieces.  Who the hell was going to clean that up, I wondered, then went back to making dinner. Did I mention it was vegetarian?

Today I found out who was going to clean it up. The squirrel. It came back to finish off the job. It started with a wing, then found the rest of the head, and finally it got the nuts, er, balls, to climb atop the lounge chair and eat the torso. I sat still in front of the window to watch the horror, and I swear that squirrel looked me in the eye. You’re next, he told me telepathically.  Then he hopped back on the tree with the corpse and ate it all.

 

Of course, I had to Google that shit. Apparently, squirrels are omnivorous. Much like my husband, squirrels can eat vegetarian only so long before they have a hankering for a thick, juicy steak, um, bird. At least I can rest easy, knowing that I don’t need to get the whole family tested for rabies. What I want to see is a hawk swoop in and eat that squirrel, then whatever eats a hawk to eat it, and so on. The circle of life, right in my own backyard.  If that doesn’t make for some lovely dinner entertainment, I don’t know what does.  Please pass the salad.

Or Would You Rather Be a Fish?

Have you ever really watched a bird do its bird stuff? I’m watching one right now, outside my office window, and let me tell you, that’s all kind of messed up.

First of all, you think you’ve got anxiety? Try being a bird. Maybe not a big scary fucker like a condor or vulture or something, but just an ordinary song bird, one that is brown with a round little head, so nondescript it could just be called Anybird. It has tiny beady eyes that are constantly scanning, its head turning practically 360 degrees to make sure danger isn’t around every corner. Anybird also hops around a lot, because a moving target is much harder to hit. Hop, flit, hop, scan, scan, turn, hop, hop, flit. Stay still already, Anybird. Jesus, you’re making me nervous too.

Anybird has a lot to make it anxious, what with cats and other big birds lurking about, ready to swoop in stealthily and bite off its head. I saw a chipmunk do that once in my backyard. A bird had stupidly flown into my kitchen window and was lying on the ground, stunned, when a crazy ass chipmunk came out of nowhere and dragged it off to a secluded spot in the yard, where it feasted on that bird like it was a Thanksgiving turkey.  Who knew chipmunks were so menacing?

Plus, Anybird has no arms. Wings don’t count. They allow a bird to fly, but that’s about it. Maybe they can be used as a blanket over its head. But can wings hold a fork? Pick up a seed? Grab a worm? Carry piles of straw and hair and other detritus to a safe spot for nest building, and then actually build a nest? No, they cannot. All they can do is flap.  Even bats have freaky little hand like things with long fingers with which to hold fruit. Are birds jealous of bats? Can they even fathom how much easier life would be with arms, or even hands?  What if a bird has an itch that its beak can’t reach? I am sure that is the number one reason that birds have anxiety in the first place. Or maybe number two, after fear of getting eaten.

Once, I saw a video online of a Chihuahua without front legs. It hopped around like a goddamn bird. I wanted to hit it with a hammer and put it out of its misery.

So this little Anybird outside my window is hopping from branch to branch, turning its head around, looking every which way, and then hopping some more, before it stops and lets out a little song. It was a sweet little bird tune, meaningless to me, since I am not a bird, but I am sure it’s more than just a mindless hum and is conveying information to other Anybirds.  What could it possibly have to say? Maybe something like “Shit, it’s cold outside. We flew up here too soon. I told those other birds it was better to stay in Florida a little longer.”  Maybe it’s saying, “Watch out, cat at three o-clock, squirrel approaching, dog walking down the street, car coming at approximately ten miles over the residential speed limit.”  Or maybe something like, “Damn, bitch, you a fine looking Anybird. What you say you come over to my nest so’s I can fertilize your eggs. Ain’t nobody fertilize like I do, baby. I can fertilize allll night. Mmm hmm, that’s right.”

Sweet little bird tunes sound great in the afternoon when I am avoiding doing any real work. They are extremely irritating at 5:45 in the morning, before the sun is all the way up. The early bird might get the worm, but it might also get hit with a flying shoe. Shut the fuck up. I have hands, and I am trying to sleep.

Here’s another thing about birds that I don’t get: what’s with the poop? Who poops in black and white anyway? What the hell are you eating, Anybirds? This afternoon, while I watched that little bird twitching on the bush outside my window, the rest of its flock was crapping berries all over my patio in the backyard, like they had the avian flu or something. What was the point of power washing anyway, now that you ruined it with your Jackson Pollock crap?  Stop Rorschaching on my car, too, if you don’t mind. I don’t shit where you live, so stop shitting all over my home. It’s just not necessary.

On the other hand, er, wing, Anybird, thanks for eating bugs. I’d take back everything I said if you could please do something about the mosquitoes this summer.  And ask over a few of your hummingbird friends, because they kick ass, orinthologically speaking. I dig me some hummingbird. Also, thanks for not being snakes. I sure am glad snakes don’t have wings. Would a snake with wings be a dragon?  No chipmunk could bring one of those down.  I’ll go put out some extra birdseed for you as a little thank you gift. Much obliged, Anybird.