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.