Poo-tee-weet?

So, I accidentally electrocuted a bird last summer. 

But not on purpose, I assure you.

Last summer I came home from work, and walking up my steps to my front door I saw something hanging down from my over-door light. A slight believer in bad omens, I shrieked and jumped back. There was definitely something dangling there, and I was almost certain it was a bat. But a bat hanging around in broad daylight?? Probably had rabies, or was actually a vampire or something. CLEARLY couldn't be trusted, whatever it was.

After shaking my keys at it (and then frantically moving to protect my face) and yelling and trying to get it to move, it was still there. So I took out my trusty camera (yes, no smart phone here) and took a photo of it. Then made the mad dash inside (yelling profanities all the way) and sent the pic out to the Internets to tell me what it was. Several suggestions arose. Probably a bat. Maybe a vampire. Couldn't be trusted, whatever it was. A vampire bat in broad daylight like that. AKA No one knew.

Returned downstairs to the peephole and tried to see. That was no good, the light was directly above and the peephole has the peripheral vision of my grandma. So I creaked open the door and dared to pop my head out and check. And there it was… it was a frickin' bird. A stone-cold, dead hanging bird.

The bird and its bird family had moved in several weeks prior and built itself a big old nest up inside my over-door light. It had been a welcomed change from when the birds would nest and mate on top of my in-window A/C unit in my bedroom. They got far too rowdy far too early for my liking when they were there. The over-door was much less noisy. Of course, I was always scared to leave that light on, lest I fry up their eggs, so I often had to key my way in in the dark if it was late. And they also liked to leave twigs and bird shit all over my stoop. But overall I had no qualms.

The nest. Before the incident.

Until the little bastard decided to die above my threshold. That was just plain rude. And I couldn't just LEAVE it dangling there. It would start to get weird and decayed, and no one would ever want to come visit me. So I knew it needed to go.

Called pest control. Explained that I had a dead, probably rabid, bird hanging and needed it removed. “Is it on private property?… then we can’t help you.” Fine.

Called the DNR. Explained the festering, probably diseased bird that was going to plague all the other animals and asked if they could come remove it. But apparently I didn't live in the right county to merit them coming.

Several other calls to every other wildlife agency I could find online and excuse after excuse until finally, exasperated, I blurted out to one of them, “WHO am I supposed to call then? I JUST WANT SOMEONE TO COME HELP ME WITH MY DEAD BIRD!” Their suggestion: call the police. Flustered, I told the lady there was no way I was going to call the POLICE about a dead frickin' bird. That was ridiculous.

Several hours later, I called the police.

They couldn't help me either but the nice officer I had on the line gave me what he surely thought were very detailed instructions on how to get rid of the bird myself. Pretty standard: knock it down, pick it up with rubber gloves and double bag that badboy before you throw it away. Now, I’m from “up north,” so nothing about this was too alarming to me. It was more that I had expected that, now that I live IN a CITY, there was someone who took care of this sort of thing. Someone other than me.

So I donned my rubber gloves and sunglasses, grabbed a broom and two garbage bags, and headed outside. After a deep breath, I raised up the broom and nudged at the bird to make it drop down. Nothing. It didn't fall. I poked at it a little harder, kind of swept at it like you would a cobweb in a corner. Nada. Didn't move. Just swayed a bit. The bird was stuck. The foot from which it was dangling was somehow twisted up in the janky wiring system around the light which had been its demise. It wasn't going to budge. It quickly became clear that this was about to be a showdown between me and my dead bird. The winner kept the house.

Panic stricken, I more or less just started wailing and swinging at it like some sort of pinata. It was mortifying. And I’m terribly sorry to say that it took SEVERAL minutes of this madness (note: I live on a main thoroughfare, so I can’t imagine what the passersby were thinking as they witnessed this) before my poor dead bird came loose. With an AWFUL thud/crunch, it hit the ground right at my feet. Babbling nonsense and completely hysterical at this point, I quickly double bagged him and tossed him in the trash. It was horrid. Scarring at best.

Shortly thereafter, I had my landlady clear out the nest and told her we needed to block off that light so it wasn't such an appealing nest basket. I didn't explain my ordeal, and she seemed to think it’d be fine. Needless to say, this spring another family of birds moved in. I pleaded with them. Asked why they didn't understand that they had just moved into a death trap. Didn't they remember their fallen comrade from last summer?? Were they really willing to risk orphaning their baby birds by surrounding a hot bulb with flammable twigs?

Why did you come back, birds? WHY? Save yourselves and go!
(And "Is that really what my hair looks like from the back?")

But they’re just birds. They didn't get my point and just built their nest anyway. They dive bomb me as I get my mail and they shit on my stoop. And some day, another one of those birds is going to meet its maker, and this time they can’t say I didn't warn them...