nevermore

I am really, really afraid of birds. REALLY afraid. I don't feel safe walking past one (let alone a group) without my glasses or sunglasses on my face and protecting my baby blues. This fear started when I read The Last Battle at a tender age (An eagle pecks out people's eyes. It was a good eagle, but still...It was too much for visual, imaginative me.) and was reinforced by the movie The Birds in junior high. You need to understand this to appreciate the creepiness of the following story:

I cannot find good, canned-in-water, white tuna here. (Creepy, eh?) I have tried and have only found what would qualify as cat food. I can get a tuna steak, but I don't like tuna salad enough to go that route. Knowing I'd forget which brands I'd tried, I decided to buy one can of each and bring them all home. Our one springlike day last week made me want a tuna sandwich. I had pita bread and olive-based mayo. I just needed the tuna. So, I started opening can after can after can.

The cans are kept in the refrigerated section of the supermarket, so I followed suit at home. Yes, it seemed ridiculous to refrigerate sealed cans, but I thought maybe they knew something about the Russian canning process that I didn't. Seeing the congealed oil and cat-food-grade tuna in can after can was disheartening. And smelly. I didn't want to put them in the trash, so I set them outside on the window ledge until I was going down to the street. I thought about pitching them out the window and hoping to hit the dumpster below, but as I did not have success with that when I tried it with a friend's baby's diapers on a previous occasion, I decided against that.

While watching tv later, I heard a Poe-esque tapping at my window. There, not five feet from me, was a rook! Rooks are horrible, horrible scary birds. They're so scary that I don't even have a picture to show you. I've never taken one. They're all over the place here. They're fearless and tenacious. They have long, cruel beaks, strong claws, and malicious, mocking, glittering, black eyes. They look like ravens wearing grey waistcoats. I shudder just writing this.

It took a bit of tuna, fixed me with a wicked glance, and then flew away. I was creeped out and didn't do anything. I hoped it would just leave. I feared it would return with a flock of other huge, scary, carnivorous birds. It came back and I knew I had to do something. This was the stuff nightmares are made of, and I have been sleepless enough. (Beazy, nach, was nowhere to be seen.) So, I banged on the window and then quickly gathered up the tuna when it flew away. There was a tense moment when I was exposed--the screenless window was wide open as I gathered the malodorous cans--trying to avoid both (possibly) returning rooks and spilled tuna juice. Fortunately, as the presence of this post attests, I survived to blog another day. Those cans stayed inside until I made it down to the dumpster.

So there you have it. Not earth shattering. But, the bloggy blurb over at the top doesn't promise eath shattering--only what daily life is like for me here. Bad tuna and rooks. That's daily life.