A few weeks ago, I wrote about a barred owl that hung out on the peak of my house and disrupted my sleep with its prancing and pawing of each little hoof, and then some.  As I started writing this, I wasn’t sure if the owl should be referred to as ‘who’ or ‘that’ so I consulted my friend, Grammar Girl. She said I should use ‘that’ when referring to the owl because I didn’t know its sex or if it had a name. Heck, I didn’t get very close with the owl, nor did I want to after what I heard up on the rooftop, so I’m fine with calling it ‘that owl’-‘that owl’ that made me eat crow.

After writing Who Cooks for You, I went on a little excursion and left the house empty for a few days.  When I came back it looked a little like a winter wonderland. I swear that every bird on the island had been to my house during my brief absence because there were white remnants of bird visitors everywhere.  I envisioned birds floating around in the water drinking cocktails with little umbrellas in them and snickering when they dropped anchor on the cement nearby.  I could see them swinging on my pretty pink swing, letting one loose between the slats, and high-fiving each other when everything seemed to make it through, which wasn’t often.  When they had enough sun, it seems they met on the upper deck for a late dinner, watched a beautiful sunset, and painted the railing white before heading back to their nests for the night.  Sounds lovely, I know, but the worst part was, they thought the party was a recurring event-every morning and evening.  I needed a way to get rid of them, and during my search, I was introduced to eating crow.

It seems that one humane way to deter unwanted bird visitors is to place a plastic predator in the yard to frighten them.  Oh, I had a real predator that must have kept bird visitors in check and I scared it off with a few clangs of a pie pan or two.  I traded a few grinding sounds in the wee hours of the morning for a blanket of bird excrement that won’t come off no matter how hard I set the water pressure on the hose.  Okay, I’ll say it, “I should have hired ‘Who Cooks for You’ when he/she wanted to cook for me.”  There, I said it and no, I don’t feel better because of it.  The real predator is gone and now I’m doing my penance. Every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to bed, I look out my window and see the plastic owl that I had to buy in order to frighten the birds away. It’s right there, perched on the table in plain view and I have to move it every 2-3 days to keep the birds guessing.  It is a constant reminder of what I did to ‘that owl’-the one who made me eat crow.