I was just about to get into the shower when I heard what sounded like ten people walking around in my attic. While I wanted to write off the sound as mice, the noise was simply too loud. Whatever was up there was a few pounds, not a few ounces. I am not normally the skittish type with an over-active imagination, but taking a shower with an unknown thumping in my attic was starting to freak me out a bit. Then our dog Teddy started to bark at the ceiling, so I took him outside to have a look around.

At first, when I noticed the scene above, I was rather relieved. Oh, look, I thought, these big guys can probably make some serious noise through the vent. THAT explains what I heard! And they’re a pair — perhaps a couple mating for life with a nest near by. Isn’t nature grand? I’m so lucky to live here!

And then, slowly, like in a movie, I walked a few inches to the right and saw this:

Two birds? Sweet. Six birds? Freaky. Here is where I admit to the world I have a bit of a frog and butterfly phobia. Anything jumpy or fluttery or with the potential to unpredictably land in my hair makes me very uneasy. I don’t want to kill them, but I do want to keep a healthy distance. Of course, most of my friends find this phobia of mine delightfully charming charmingly quirky completely nuts. Birds are in the same category as frogs and butterflies, but they usually have the good sense to keep their distance from humans.

So there I was, outside in the rain with a fluffy white delicious looking dog, and as I’m about to head to the front door to walk back inside, I see this over the doorway:

You’ll have to excuse the poor photo quality, for at this point, I was across the street at my neighbor’s house, shaking and crying and pointing at my roof like a full fledged crazy person. That’s the thing with phobias — they go from rational to irrational in the blink of an eye. I needed to explain to my neighbor that no, I could not simply walk through the front door of my house like a normal person, because you see those six birds up there? And their four friends on the side of the house, too? They are going to swoop down and eat me and Teddy the second we get too close to the house.

In an overly calm tone favored by those in the hostage negotiation business, my neighbor told me to sit tight while she honked her horn to scare them away. It took a good forty-five seconds of honking before one of them flew off or even flinched, but they finally left my rooftop so I could safely return to my house. The end.