Do not feed the birdsI seriously could have died.

Okay, not seriously.

Well, maybe.

In my life, birds are not welcome. I had a bird when I was little and we loved him. His name was Spike. He died of a cold. So, my mom, being the good mom that she is, replaced Spike with Spike 2. He was evil. He hated us and was the complete opposite of original Spike. That’s when my fear began.

Oh, no, that’s not when it began. It’s when I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Birds”. Holy hell.

This is how the average person sees birds:

southern mockingbird

This is how I see them:

Throughout the years, we’ve ALWAYS attracted birds. They make nests on the front porch of every house we live in. We’ve gone out of our way to prevent the nest making but they are sneaky and evil and find us. Last summer, we had a bird fly in through the dryer exhaust on the side of our house and get stuck in the vent.

This was a freaking disaster.

You could hear the thing fluttering and trying to get out of the vent and back to freedom. It didn’t work. We detached the dryer hose from the wall and ran like hell away from this winged creature and hid in the bedroom. Okay, not all of us did. Just my son Colton and I did. I left a window open for him to fly out. To this day, I have no idea where he flew or how long it took for him to get out of the house because just two weeks later, I was distracted by ANOTHER FREAKING BIRD in our dryer vent. Are you kidding me?

Let’s not talk about what happened to that one. A guy came out to the house and basically put prison-worthy fencing over the vent on the outside of our house. If a bird gets in this year, he can have the house. We’ll move. He deserves it with as much effort as it will be to get inside.

Then today happened.

 t and c at lunch

This is my son Colton and I at lunch. It was gorgeous today so we just chilled outside (me wearing a hat and cropped yoga pants, duh). He was super-excited to be hanging with the coolest person on the planet that he wanted to make a checkered flag. Um? That stick is from a men’s dress shoe at Kohl’s. I pulled out my trusty Sharpie and whipped out the amazing artwork. No autographs, please.

Guess who else was at lunch with us?

BIRDS!!!!

The table next to us kept feeding the birds. My anxiety level got so high once THEBIRDLANDEDONOURTABLERIGHTBYMYFOOD that I told them about my terrible fear. They laughed like I was joking. It’s probably because I’m afraid of looking psycho in public so I delivered my request in a kind way. What I really wanted to say is, “IF YOU FEED THOSE BIRDS ONE MORE TIME, I’LL RIP YOUR FREAKING FACE OFF!”

Good news: We made it out safely with no more bird incidents.

The end.

Not the end.

I think I have Ornithophobia. The fear of birds.

The end for real.

tawsha connell