Dad vs The Birds: Season Four

For most people, after a long hard winter, the sight of that first robin in the yard is a hopeful sign that spring is finally here. Oh joy!

Not for my father. For him it's "Oh crap!" It's a depressing sign that soon the little "s.o.b.'s" will once again be all over his cherry tree, doing their best to make certain Dad never gets to taste even one delicious ripe cherry. It's the same every year.

And thus begins Season Four of "DAD AND THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS". (Previously seen on June 27, 2006 and June 15, 2008. Apparently I neglected to report in June 2007.) I talked to him a few days ago and when I asked what he'd been up to lately, he told me he's right in the middle of his annual battle with the robins. He's made quite a few improvements to his defensive maneuvers since Season One, when he first tried the conventional fake owl and dangling aluminum pans, then progressed to a boom box in the branches playing offensive rock music. Among other innovations. None of which made a twit of difference. In Season Two and Three he stepped up his measures considerably by "tenting" the tree with netting. Apparently this was flawed because he could not quite get full coverage and the "damn birds" easily found their way in.

And now for Season Four. Once again we find the Dad-man tenting the tree. But this year he added even more netting, carefully sewing it all together nice and tight with nary a hole for entrance. He even climbed a ladder to the very top of the tree to make sure it was COMPLETELY sewn up. (And oh by the way, we just celebrated his 90th birthday May 1st. He doesn't seem to be slowing down with the ladder climbing thing.) BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Someone gave him a few rolls of chicken wire. This is crucial, because the netting itself is not long enough to reach the ground, and he has previously had to try and gather it up around the trunk of the tree, leaving too much room for error. But THIS year, he has surrounded the tree with a fence of fine chicken wire, and attached the netting painstakingly to the chicken wire. A veritable fortress! He has gone over every square inch of this structure and found absolutely NO WAY for a bird to get in there. THIS year, CHERRIES!

He told me how proud and satisfied he was when he finally got this thing finished, and then went inside the house for dinner. (In Dad-speak, dinner is mid-day. "Supper" is what many of us would call dinner. It's an old-school rural thing. But I digress.) So after his dinner and subsequent nap, he went outside to inspect his handiwork. And there inside the fortress was the biggest robin of the bunch. Fluttering around, half out of his mind with frustration over being stuck in there. And there's Dad, hopping mad, half out of his mind with frustration over how in blazes he got in there. Impossible! And yet, there he was. So now Dad has to try and get him back out. But of course he's done such a great job of sewing the thing up tight, he has to spend a whole lot of time and effort, undoing his work to make a space for the damn bird to escape. So he makes a breach for the robin to get out. But of course, the damn robin doesn't get it. Flutter flutter. So Dad (by now saying many bad words) has to make the escape hole even bigger. Bird still doesn't get it. Dad tells me, "Somehow the little son-of-a-gun found a way to get in when there wasn't even a hole big enough for a cockroach to get in. Then I make a hole big enough for a cow to walk through and he can't find it!" Well, after much to-do and very strong temptations to execute the damn bird while he's still in there, he finally makes his way out.

So Dad closes the hole back up, goes through his rigorous inspection of every square inch once again, and feels pretty satisfied that bird won't be back. And he was right. A different bird got in.

Well you may be thinking what any sane person would be thinking; for all the time, effort and money it has cost him to thwart the efforts of the damn robins, he could have bought and enjoyed several bushels of cherries from someone else by now. But that's not the point. As he says, he just can't stand to let the little s.o.b.'s get the better of him.

So rock on, Dad. May the Force be with you. This just might be the year. And if it is, I hope those cherries are worth it. What am I saying? If Dad wins, those will be the sweetest cherries he ever ate.

Happy Birthday to Me

I am 57 years old today! Yippee. I've been practicing saying "57" recently so it wouldn't be so much of a shock when the day came. It doesn't actually seem so bad. You know, now that 50 is the new 40 and all that hoopla. I keep reading about how we 'boomers' refuse to be old, so hey, I'll join that movement. For all the good it will do me. (Hint people: WE ALL GET OLD.)

Fortunately aging is a fairly gradual thing. Assuming we actually look at ourselves in the mirror every day, it should not come as a shock that things are changing in that reflection. (It is odd though how once in awhile a specific wrinkle can actually dig in overnight, like one of those flowers that suddenly blooms in one day.) But the physical changes are only part of the story. Like someone who eventually loses ALL their hair, I have finally lost ALL my hip-ness. I have lost ALL vestiges of my knowledge of current pop culture, technology trends, and cool jargon. Ya see, there's an example right there. Hardly anyone under 40 says "cool". Or "jargon" for that matter. The word "cool" has been replaced with any number of other adjectives. The last one I am aware of is "sweet". But since I am at least ten years behind in modern youth-speak, "sweet" is probably out the door by now.
I think the word "hip" is gone too. I followed that word just long enough to be able to use it in a sentence like "Yeah, I'm hip to that." Then I think it changed to "I'm so down with that." It took me awhile to realize that 'down' was not a bad thing. Like Alice's Wonderland, a lot of stuff is upside down. For example, "Phat" is good. And that's right about where I left off.

I remember lots of fun ways to say things when I was young. "Hang a Louie" meant 'turn left' and "bang a Ralph" meant 'turn right.' Of course Louie also meant lunger and that's about as far as I want to go with that train of thought. Ralph also took on other meanings, including 'barf'. Then it became 'spew', 'spew chunks' and 'hurl'. There are probably new ones now. Ah, there can never be enough words for puking.

But besides all that, I have peacefully accepted that I will nevermore keep up with popular technology. I'm cool with computers. (Did you notice how I slipped in "cool"? Sometimes I can't help myself.) But cell phones, iPods, Blackberries, Bluetooth? Uh uh. Yes, I am able to make a phone call with my cell phone and recently learned how to add contacts in it. But this obsession with texting is so beyond me. I do not know how to text. (And when did the word 'text' become a verb anyway? It even has tenses, as in "Jason just texted me. " That just sounds so wrong.) I received a text message just once and I had no idea what was going on. My cell phone made a noise I had never heard before and I thought it was the alert for low battery. I picked it up and discovered I had a text message. What do I do now? I finally figured out how to retrieve the message and felt as if I had arrived in the 21st century. Until I realized I had no idea how to text back to the friend who sent the message. So I just called him and told him never to do that again.

It bugs me that youngsters (how do you like that one?) are continually staring at their cell phones and punching in messages that as far as I can tell amount to "what are you doin?" "Nothing." What a wasted use of God's great idea of the opposable thumb. But I've decided that it serves no purpose to get aggravated. This is just how it is. If I had kids of my own I would teach them simple manners about using their phones at the dinner table, just like our parents had rules about reading a comic book at the dinner table. Same code of courtesy, just different media. However, I understand that generally speaking, things are the way they are, kids have new ways to confound their elders, and although I don't like tattoos, body piercings, or texting, it's here and that's it and that's that. Done deal. Get over it.

So Happy Birthday to me. I am perfectly content to be 57, text-challenged and woefully un-hip.
Yo Dawg, I am so down with that.