The Early Bird

What’s nicer than watching the birds frolicking outside your kitchen window when you’re washing dishes? Okay, that was too easy: it’s watching birds frolicking outside your kitchen window when you’re not washing dishes.

Or watching the birds playing tag in the trees any time is actually a good stress-reliever.

What’s NOT a bird-related stress-buster? Listening to them chirp, sing, trill and warble their little hearts out at five-freaking-thirty in the morning. When I’m in bed, trying to sleep. What’s up with that?

They are super loud for about a half-hour, then it gets relatively quiet again. Of course, usually I can’t fall back to sleep after the thirty-minute cacophony serenade.

A couple of weeks ago my daughter was visiting from Sacramento. We both happened to get up at a little after 5, and met, groggy and droopy-eyed in the middle of the hall, simultaneously planning to check on her 3-year old son. We peeked in and saw him sleeping like an angel, shut the door, and agreed we’d be going back to bed, too.

As we hugged, she asked, “What’s that noise?” I listened, and didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. She persevered. “Listen—there—what’s that?”

“Um, gee, Honey, I know you haven’t lived in the Midwest for a while, but those are birds.”

“No!”

“Really. Get some sleep. The birds in California don’t sing? They haven’t even built up a quorum here yet—in half an hour it’ll really be something. For now, catch a few more winks.”

We went back to our respective beds, but I never did fall back to sleep. I was reminded of a little poem a coworker of mine gave me at my first job out of college. His name was Buddy Bunch (for real) and he was almost old enough to be my father. That didn’t stop him from being the ‘class clown’ of the office. Here’s Buddy’s poem in its entirety (please forgive the profanity—it’s copied from his original):

The Early Bird

He sang upon my window sill

So sweetly did he lull.

I brought the goddamn window down

And crushed his tiny skull.

I didn’t say it was good, I just said it came to mind.