For the birds

You may have noticed in past posts a reference to my slight aversion to birds and may be wondering where it all started. Or not, but I am going to tell you anyway.

It all began at the tender age of six, when I was in some sort of zoo or park (the mind dims with old age) and was mugged by a goose which bit my finger and stole my toy block (ah the days before gameboy or PSP or whatever they are now).

I tried to get over it by owning a budgie, but in hindsight probably should have splurged the $10 at the pet store buying a tame one instead of catching one from the roof of the neighbour's house. She turned out to be the most vicious, psychotic bird I've met and would hang upside down from her perch screeching like a banshee. That and the fact that she regularly drew blood from any unwary fingers coming too close to her cage as well as living for what felt like forever (6 years is a long time to have a devil-bird in your room watching you sleep through the cracks in the sheet over the cage and making ominous low chirping noises) convinced me that she was half budgie-half vampire.

Then I arrived at University to discover that there were swans living around the pond outside the vet block and, at certain times of the year when the males were, lets call it "frisky", we would have have to run the gauntlet to get to and from class. This consisted of waiting until a small group of people had arrived at one end of the bridge and then making a dash for the other side with a hissing, flapping black male swan flying out from nowhere to challenge the unwanted intruders. It was not long until he was "relocated". I never did check if the on-campus students were served "chicken" for dinner that week.

But my tale cannot end without mentioning why I am especially nervous around chickens, apart from their beady little eyes and ominous "quaaarrrrkkk..." emerging from the bushes as you walk obliviously past their jealously guarded nests, before your ankles are attacked by a furiously windmilling ball of feathers, beak and clawed feet. No, this tale begins at an ex-boyfriend's place where his parents owned bantam chickens. One of the chickens had a habit of jumping on the windowsill and tapping on the window demanding to be fed. Now, I've never been a fan of being at the beck and call of any animal, let alone an animal that might well be my dinner one day, and it was even worse when she trained her little male chicken to do exactly the same thing. He was even tamer than his mother, to the point where he would to sit on my boyfriend's mother's shoulder. She would then bring the bird into the house and plop him on my shoulder like a parrot, where he would sit staring at me with his sharp little beak inches away from my unprotected eyeball.
"Haha, very cute," I would say, whilst shooting meaningful glances in the direction of my boyfriend that said, "Get this bloody bird off my shoulder before I lose an eye!"
One day I was sitting on the deck and our fluffy half-grown little friend jumped onto a small table next to me. I looked at it warily as it eyed my shoulder.
"Careful!" smiled my boyfriend from the steps, "He'll try to jump on your shoulder!"
"What?" I said, taking my eyes of the bantam chick for ONE SECOND. With a feral squawk that shot terror into my heart it FLEW at my head and landed with one foot in my hair and one clawed foot firmly embedded in my shoulder.
"Get it off, get it OFF!" I screeched, grabbing the madly flapping bird and throwing it to the ground, where it shook the dust out of its feathers and glowered at me with its beady little eyes while my loving partner rolled around on the ground laughing his arse off.
"Oh shut up and chase him away before he tries it again," I said grumpily as the cheeky beggar started hopping up the stairs towards me (they must be like cats, the less you want them around the more attention they seek).
He grabbed a coal scuttle and tried to shoo it away but, instead of running off like a NORMAL chicken, it ATTACKED THE COAL SCUTTLE. My brave boyfriend actually backed away from it for a few steps until he heard me laughing at him running away from a chicken (what does that make him then?) and gave it a small whack with the scuttle, whereby it finally realised that he was actually bigger and stronger than it and took off with a angry squawk.

So, it seems that while many birds seem to have a tendency to freak out and die when I handle them; the remainder seem to have one purpose in life, and that is to freak ME out. I rest my case.