Fucking Birds (part 1)

I have bad luck with birds. I used to like them when I was a kid, that was until my parakeet went bonkers and killed my other one. I’ll have you know that it’s a bit traumatic to come home at seven years old and find poor Petey stiff as a board on the bottom of the cage with the top of his head pecked in. All because Petunia wanted to sit next to the mirror. She was a bitch and she lived for what seemed like forever. All the while flinging herself at your hand to bite it the second you tried to give her more water and food. My mother had finally had enough of her and pawned her off onto Crazy Nanny. Where she continued to live and prosper for even longer, and still viciously attacked everything in her sight.

The uneasy feeling I have towards birds isn’t just because of Petunia. It’s directly related to a few other experiences as well. One time, while vacationing in Florida as a kid, my parents took me to one of those gator farms. Obviously they had plenty of gators to see, but they also had other animals too. Some of which were parrots. And of course, my father, paying little or no attention at all to the “Don’t Touch The Birds” sign, sticks his hand in the cage in an attempt to pet the parrot. This fucker lunged at him so fast and clamped down on the metal bars like a vice grip. He had barely escaped a finger amputation…but he didn’t learn his lesson.

Years later, we happen to be in Vegas and the hotel we were staying at has a variety of exotic birds on display around one of their bars. Well, sure as shit, my father has to disregard the Don’t Touch signs and play with them. So there are these two medium size purple and green birds sitting on a perch together. And they let my father pet them. And the one was loving him, making cooing noises and rubbing it’s head into his hand. All was well until it had enough of being played with. Instead of pulling its head back or walking away, it bit into my father’s finger, ripping a chunk out of it between the knuckle and tip. It bled like a bitch…and of course all I could do is laugh. And the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, because here comes my mother, walking down the corridor back from a shopping trip. To find her husband bleeding profusely and her daughter hysterically laughing at him. She laughed too though…that’s what you get for not reading the signs.

I also had my own “miscommunication” with a bird. I was working at a movie studio in New York for a film I happened to be on. And the guy at the studio had a pet cockatiel (it might be a cockatoo, I have no idea, nor do I care enough to know what the difference between the two is.) Everybody loved the bird. It seemed like the whole damn production staff loved the bird. I, on the other hand, would not go near it. I had way too many close calls with the fuckers as I was growing up to know that they can’t be trusted. Finally after some coaxing by my coworkers, I relented and acknowledged the bird with something other than a cautious glare. And low and behold, he liked me. He liked me so much that he would do a little dance for me and make happy noises and act real cute (I should have know, I had seen this act before from the bastard in Vegas). Before long, the guy who owned the studio was telling me I should let him on my shoulder. Shoulder? I told him I wasn’t so sure about that.
B: That’s a little too close to my face. Too close to my ear. He could get pissed and bite my nose…peck at my eye.

Studio Owner: Nah, he’s sweet. He doesn’t bite. And he really likes you.

B: (Still very skeptical, but feeling guilty) Ok. Fine. But only for a minute.

The guy seems happy that I’ll let his stupid bird on my shoulder so I figured it would be fine. Besides, I hadn’t seen an aggressive act from this bird all damn day. I stick my arm out in an attempt to let him climb up to my shoulder. But he doesn’t get on it. He actually starts doing a little dance similar to the one he had been doing for me earlier. Apparently this time it wasn’t a dance. It was some sort of agitated bird ritual they do…RIGHT BEFORE THEY FUCKING BITE YOU. He snapped his beak down on my forearm so hard and so fast I couldn’t even react. The studio owner jumped up to help me and the bird finally let go. And in an instinctual moment I went to backhand him off of me, and the fucker knew it…because he immediately jumped back out of the way of my hand.

With my arm feeling like it’s on fire and already starting to bruise, I asked the guy what the fuck that was all about…

B: What the fuck? I thought he didn’t bite…and he liked me. I knew I shouldn’t have let him on my shoulder.

SO: (In between asking me about a hundred times if I was ok, obviously in an attempt to have me not sue him.) He normally doesn’t…you didn’t put your hand out.

B: (Now I’m getting madder, because somehow this has become my fault.) What? You didn’t tell me I had to put my hand out a certain way. What the fuck?

SO: Yeah, he can’t climb onto your arm. You have to put your finger out.

B: Why didn’t you tell me this when you saw him getting pissed off?

SO: I thought you knew.

BECAUSE I SPEAK BIRD? Now I want to backhand this asshole. I had just spent the better part of ten hours keeping a safe distance between me and that fucking pit viper with wings and when I’m finally going to let him up on my shoulder he just assumes I know what the fucking thing wants. I then had to spend the rest of my day convincing the producers of the film that I didn’t need to go to the emergency room. Beaks aren’t necessarily that sharp unless they actually pull when they bite…and thankfully this fucker didn’t really pull so it barely broke the skin. The only pain came from the pressure…they are much, much stronger then they appear.

Anyway…there was a point to this random babbling about why I hate birds, a funny incident involving me and birds from the other night…but I feel like I’ve been typing a lot, so I’m going to continue it tomorrow. I apologize, I had no idea my hatred for birds was as long as it is.