The Shitbird

The BBQ Pit
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Prelude: An Admonition to the Moderators.

This is a story of a curse. Of a rage and hatred to equal that of Achilles on the fields of Troy. And, as Briseus was to Achilles, so is the placement of this thread in this forum to me. Leave this thread in the Pit, where it belongs or suffer the curse of He-whose-thread-must-not-be-moved.

Despite, my genteel language in describing the following events, my rage is large. It is only with the greatest degree of self-control, that I describe the following in mild language. Think of it as the calm whisper of a madman before he explodes.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Shitbird. If so, it has probably come up in the context of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, Unicorns, Aliens, or threesomes with college girls. Everybody knows somebody who claims they’ve seen bigfoot, or had a threesome, but in the way of urban myths, nobody will actually claim that they, personally, have firsthand knowledge. So, let’s get this out of the way:

The Shitbird is real. I know.

This is my story:

About two weeks ago I walked up to my Ridgeline truck and there was a bird, a Robinlike thing sitting on the mirror. It flew off as I got closer. When I got in the truck I noticed the bird had shit all over the mirror. The mirror. I wondered at the physics of it. The mirror is at an angle. Gravity would tend to pull shit down, not sideways. So, the bird must have thrust its cloaca towards the mirror at the moment of shitting in order to impart a horizontal velocity thus impacting the mirror.

It seemed unusual, but I am hardly an expert in vectors as they apply to avian defecation upon an inclined plane, so after puzzling over it for a few moments, I went to work, washed my truck over lunch, and promptly forgot about it. It could have been a freak gust of wind that blew the shit into my mirror.

‘Tis the wind and nothing more!’ I thought.
I came home that evening, got changed, and went outside for a jog. There, on the same mirror was the Shitbird. As I got closer, he flew away. There was another huge shit in the same place, plus he’d shit on the other side of the mirror as well.

I thought about this as I jogged, and concluded that my truck mirror was probably a convenient roosting spot near his nest.

Only this, and nothing more.

So, I came home and washed the shit off with the hose, and then moved my truck to the other side of my wife’s car. The next morning, no bird, no shit, no problem… until I opened the door. While the bird was nowhere to be seen, there was birdshit on the door handle… and now my hand.

I am beginning to feel mildly peeved.

I go back to the house, wash my hand, get a towel and some windex, wipe off the door handle, and go to work. I saw no bird. No reason to assume it was the same bird, right? No reason to get angry. I just let it go.

For a week, that’s the end of it.

Last Saturday, I drive off in the morning for a run with my running buddy. I return at 10 AM. It is already getting hot. At work, in the heat, I leave the windows partly open to keep the inside of the car cool. If I’m at home for the night I leave them closed in case it rains. On a Saturday in July, if I know I’m going out again, and if it is really hot, and then, only sometimes, I will leave the windows open to keep the car cool. Last Saturday was an if, if, and sometimes kind of July Saturday.

Later that day, when I returned to the car, the Shitbird was on the mirror, and so was the shit. I walked closer and the shitbird flew off. It wasn’t a particularly big shit on the mirror, but it was a shit nonetheless.

"Hmmm. " I thought. “I’m going to have to do something about this.”

I checked the door handle, and it was clean. I opened the door, got in, turned on the key, put the truck in “drive” and got shit all over my hand. The Shitbird had crapped right on the gear selector. It had also crapped on the dashboard. Oddly, the first thought that crossed my mind was “Well, that solves that puzzle.” The vast quantity of shit on the gear selector and dashboard explained the relatively small quantity of shit on the mirror. The Shitbird must have been nearly empty for his final effort.

That evening, after cleaning the car… again, I told my wife of the Shitbird. “What are you going to do, Scylla?” She asked.

I looked at her mildly. “I’m going to kill the Motherfucker.”

Sunday morning, I got the pellet gun, a cup of coffee, the new Dave Robicheaux novel and a chair. I put the truck in the Shirtbird’s preferred location, and then I waited.

(Part two coming up. Will post this now, so it doesn’t get lost to the Hamsters.)

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Preview: Scylla shoots the Shitbird.

All is calm for a week, and then Scylla walks out to his truck, only to find that several members of PETA have taken a dump in it.

Scylla grabs his handy SKS rifle, and waits…

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I had a forefather of he Shitbird do almost the same thing to me about two years ago. First the one mirror 1, 2, 3 times inside of a week. The a hiatus of about a week. Then the mirror again. Then after about three days, I stopped to run in and left the windows open. No shit on the mirror. No shit inside the car. But the mother of all bird shits right on the friggin rolled down window. After trying to get it off by roll up window—clean—roll up window—clean—roll down window—clean, for about 20 minutes, without great success, I took the car to the mechanic I know and had him yank the damn panel off and clean it. Frustrating as hell.

But then, my shitbird stopped. I think it might have been all the cleaning product, but who the hell knows. Good luck with your Elmer J. Fudding.

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Why do I hear music playing…?

…Cause I’m as free as a bird now,
And this bird you’ll never change…!

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The bird shits on your truck. Your truck shits in his air. Look at it from his point of view.

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Oh, for Pete’s sake, don’t bother. You get a hardon for a fucking bird because you can’t be bothered to take the minor effort required to keep birds out of your car. Whoop-de-do.

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The necessity of looking up every few minutes to check for the Shitbird made it difficult to read. It kept intruding into my thoughts. What did the Shitbird want? What was it about my truck, that so attracted the Shitbird? The color?

These questions were a defense mechanism, a compensation. In my secret heart I feared, that I knew the truth. My truck had nothing to do with it. The Shitbird had come for me. One can hide from these things, but in one form or another we all have it coming, and the Shitbird is waiting. As I kind of, sort of, read my book I gradually admitted this truth to myself. What I couldn’t figure out though was why. I couldn’t recall pissing of any gypsies recently. Perhaps it was the spirit of a dead enemy? Sadly, as far as I knew, all my enemies (such as Frank) were still alive (which I guess doesn’t say much about my skills as a nemesis.) I couldn’t think of any wrongs that I’d committed which could be symbolically righted by the curse of the Shitbird.

Maybe it was just one of those things. In The Raven, the narrator hadn’t done anything wrong except pine for his girlfriend. In the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, all the sailor does is kill a seagull, and then everybody on the ship practically dies of thirst except the narrator who is then cursed for eternity to walk around confessing his bird murder to wedding guests…
Hmmmm. Considering the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, was what I was planning a good idea? Anyway, what were the chances the bird would show up while I was actually waiting for it with a pellet gun in my hands?

And then of course the Shitbird showed up. It took residence on the truck mirror. I lifted up the pellet gun which was equipped with a cheap scope and sighted on the nasty thing.

By now, the astute among you will realize that there’s a problem here that I failed to foresee. Had I thought things, through I’d have realized the problem and the potential consequences. It should have been obvious. In hindsight, it was.

I had the Shitbird in my sights, and, when the Shitbird is in your sights, what do you do?

You pull the trigger.

So I pulled the trigger.
(Part 3, the finale, coming up.)

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Hmmm…I think there may be a bluegrass song in this story somewhere…
(Composing while waiting for the ending)

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Awww… “Poe” you… :D:D

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How much will the new mirror be costing you?

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Just for giggles, I think I’ll wait a little while and see if anybody can guess what happened.

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$165 installed.

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At the start, with the Moderator Admonition, I thought this was going to be an elaborate metaphorical story about your rage for another poster. I was still trying to figure out what your beef with **Kanicbird ** or another avian poster was, and what rage you must be feeling to metaphorically describe their attacks as vertical shitting.

I think perhaps the answer is much more clearer and literal than that which I was thinking.

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That bird and his buddies must be laughing their tails off.

For next time.

Or this.

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It’s not the cost, really. It’s the ignominy of having been goaded into becoming the architect of my own denouement, by a fucking bird.

It’s walking back into your house and having your wife ask you “So, did you get it?”

I am generally a pretty good liar, or at least adept at spinning circumstances in such a manner as to reflect favorably on my behalf. However, the discharged pellet gun, the broken mirror, and the lack of a dead bird left me little opportunity for dissembling.

I do not enjoy having to explain to my wife what an idiot I am.
At the car dealership, they see the mirror. It looks exactly like the mirror got shot with a pellet gun. “Looks like somebody shot your mirror with a pellet gun. What happened?” they ask.

The shame of that question is much larger than you would think.

If you try to lie, than you have to admit to yourself, that not only are you an idiot to stupid to figure out the possible consequences of shooting at a mirror, not only are you such a terrible shot that you can’t hit a sitting bird at 25 yards with a scoped pellet gun, you are also such a weasel that you can’t even admit it.

So, I tried to downplay it. Which of course, made it more interesting.

“Yeah, I guess it got shot.”

“Do you know who did it?” they ask.

“Yeah, I do. It was an accident, though.”

“Huh! Some accident. What are they doing shooting pellet guns at your car? I hope they are going to pay you for it.”

"Yeah, well, umm [sub]I kinda was the one who shot it[/sub]

“Oh,” and then there’s that uncomfortable silence where they kind of look at you the way your wife did when you tried to weasel out of admitting it.
On the bright side, I haven’t seen the Shitbird since.
Here’s the thing, though. If I do, I am going to kill the Motherfucker.

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This bird upset you enough to pull you away from a Robicheaux novel?

Man, you were pissed.

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In point of fact, the Honda Ridgeline is a ULEV, an “Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle.”

So, no.

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From the poetry of Edgar Allan Poo.

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First, the Ancient Mariner killed an albatross, not a seagull.

Second, when you stare into the Shitbird, remember, the Shitbird stares into you.

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