The bird thing
Since it appears that many of my current readers didn’t know I loathe birds ? much less why ? I thought I’d share this morbid little tale from my personal history.
When my family returned Stateside after our years in Libya, my father was stationed at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. We moved into an old Victorian house on North Pearl Street in Lebanon. It was a huge house, complete with full basement and attic. It was also damn creepy, at least to five-year-old me. Too many nooks and crannies and dark windy staircases.
Situated on a corner, the house was surrounded by massive, old maple trees, and those trees were full of birds’ nests. Blackbirds, I guess ? at least they were black and they were birds. Maybe sparrows too. They were always fighting amongst themselves, and making a terrible racket. Perhaps that’s why there were always so many bird carcasses littering our yard and the sidewalks beneath the trees. And in the spring, the corpses of ugly featherless babies who’d fallen out of the nests added to the mess.
I didn’t wear shoes unless threatened with a spanking. In Libya I’d spent as much time barefoot as possible, and had come to detest footwear of any kind. When headed outside to play on a warm day, it didn’t occur to me to don shoes. I’d dash outside in my bare feet, and … squish. Well, the soft-bodied babies squished. The adult birds crunched as my running feet snapped bones in their bodies. I can still clearly remember the revolting sensations of both squish and crunch under the soles of my feet. And I can remember rubbing my feet on the lawn to wipe baby-bird gore off. You’d think that once would have cured me of going shoeless, but no. I persisted in running around barefooted, and had repeated close encounters of the squashing kind with dead birds.
These experiences so traumatized me that I began having nightmares about dead birds, and those nightmares have recurred throughout my life. The main one involved me being buried in a pile of stinky decaying bird carcasses, and trying to claw my way out. Over time, I became more and more phobic about birds ? dead or alive ? and began to abhor feathers even when not attached to a bird. In an effort to cure me of my ornithophobia, my parents bought me a pet parakeet when I was in third grade. It died, which was a huge relief to me because I was terrified of that thing. My parents made me remove the body from the cage and bury it, and that was the last time I touched a bird that wasn’t in a package from the supermarket.
Birds creep me out so much that I tend to avoid even looking at pictures of them. Their creepy noises actually make my stomach churn. The flutter of wings makes my skin crawl. In fact, just thinking about fluttering wings, or anything of an avian nature, gives me the heebie-jeebies.
In direct contradiction to that, however, I offer this and this, both taken with a zoom lens. Seagulls don’t bother me much, except when they’re dive-bombing me to steal food. And I think sandpipers are beautiful from a distance, especially silhouetted against the sunset. And I love the cooing of mourning doves. As long as they’re outside and I’m not.
[tags]Ornithophobia, birds[/tags]
January 21st, 2008 at 8:27 am
Egads, that’s quite the story. I guess birds would freak me out, too, if I’d been through that. Snakes freak me out a bit, though I don’t have a personal snake trauma in my past. Every time I see the Black Racer snake in my yard (totally harmless) I jump and say, “Fuck!” I don’t do that when I’m looking at the snakes in Petco, however. Still, would I ever have one as a pet. HELL NO. Can you imagine if that bastard gets out?!
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January 21st, 2008 at 11:04 am
Wow. What an amazing and kind of frightening story. I can understand why you might be afraid of birds.
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January 21st, 2008 at 11:17 am
Yeah, I think your bird-fears are justified. Eeep!
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January 21st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Well, I think that had I too squished dead bird guts with my toesies, I might be a little hesitant to want to look at or think about birds. Good lord!!
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January 21st, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I think you have reason to have a fear of birds. Can you watch the Alfred Hitchcock movie the Birds? That movie to this day freaks me out.
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January 21st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Okay, you have a reason to have bird fear. It makes my ‘having flapping things near my face’ reason look, well, stupid.
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January 21st, 2008 at 7:01 pm
I remember having to trade pages with you at the paper when yours had a photo of a bird on it. Also, forgetting your fear and glowingly describing Lorakeet Landing at the Wild Animal Park only to stop mid-sentence when I saw the horror on your face. Sorry about that, Hon
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Then I suppose you wouldn’t like me to share the story about the time our rooster flew at my mom and tangled his spurs in her old-fashioned metal hair curlers?
Uh, yeah, I didn’t think so…
Anyway, (new topic!) sounds like you were maybe an air force brat too?
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January 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
That’s a very good reason for the fear! Let’s just stick to kitties and no birdies! ;)
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
…eeeeuuuuuwwww….
That is most definitely a grade-A, chrome plated reason for disliking birds.
/twitches
January 24th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Yup, this is where my fear of birds comes from. I don’t have any personal story like this, but growing up with BOTH of my parents being terrified of birds definitely made me terrified of birds. I can’t even handle eating at outdoor dining areas when birds are around. ::shudders::
January 24th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
To all of you, I say: SEE?!?! See why I abhor them?
Sheryl: I remember sitting there listening to you and thinking, WHY? Why would anyone want birds to LAND on them?!?!
And Aunt Robin, I’m traumatized just by what little you said right there. It’s a horrifying picture I don’t want to contemplate.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Although I don’t have any bad experiences other than being crapped on by a gull when I was 10, I’m with you - CREEPY! Birds totally skeeve me out too.
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January 26th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Uuughh!! Even if I had shoes on stepping on the carcasses - I’ll have nightmares! I have the heebeejeebies just reading your story.
It’s funny that you’re ok with seagulls (most people hate seagulls but love birds) - maybe because they’re tough? They can handle themselves and will fly away?
Your story really explains why you hate birds. It is traumatic. Wow.
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January 26th, 2008 at 10:28 am
btw, I want to thank you for your help with the wordpress plugins. I kind of browsed around wordpress plugin selections, and came up with a workable plugin that does reply to people’s email addresses - although it’s only one comment at a time. It’ll do… for now.
thanks again!
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