Gutter: The tell-tale bird

I’ve been a bit busy the last few days and haven’t had the time to sit down and really dissect the preliminary hearing of Jeffrey Angelo Ramous (aka The Parkway West Rock Thrower) that was held on Thursday. I’ve got a lot to say about it, but mitigating circumstances have prevented me from devoting the necessary time.

That’s not entirely accurate, though. See, I had time yesterday to put together a blog about the preliminary hearing, and I have time today as well, but at this point in time I am suffering from a very serious distraction:

I first noticed it when I woke up yesterday morning to an odd repetitive noise, a thumping that occurred from time to time. It happened intermittently throughout the day, and I searched the house for its source, with no success. I could hear that the noise was coming from a certain area of the house, that area being the window that is in the hallway that runs the length of my ground-floor apartment. So I stood at the window, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. But I couldn’t see anything, so I left the area and resumed the day’s activities.

But just as I would get back into the book I was reading or turn the TV back on or log onto the internet, the thumping would start again. It wasn’t a constant “thump thump thump;” rather every few minutes or so there would be a new thump. And with each passing thump, I became more perplexed and, as time went on, more frustrated. I grew maddened with the thumping and, on at least one occasion, I wondered if the thumps were just in my imagination.

I harkened back to the Edgar Allen Poe story of the tell-tale heart, and considered the possibility that the thumping was really a product of some deep-seeded guilt that I had buried in my subconscious mind. Now, I can readily admit that I have plenty of moments in my past that could have resulted in buried guilt, but as I searched for the source of the thumping, I couldn’t imagine why the guilt would appear now.

So the cycle continued: after each search, having found nothing I would return to my previous activity, and shortly thereafter the thumping would resume. Madness crept ever closer.

Then, by some fortune, I happened to catch a glimpse of the culprit. After several thumps, I rose from the couch and walked into the hallway toward the window where the thumping originated. Just as I got to the window, I saw a blur of feathers fly away from the sill, and at that moment I understood: a bird, through some madness of his own, had been flying into the window. Finding no success, he had perched himself upon the windowsill and continued to attempt entry. This had been repeating over and over again all day.

The thing is, my windows aren’t exactly the type that are so clean a bird could mistake it for an open passageway; on the contrary, my windows are so dirty that I wonder how the bird could not have seen them. But he continued to do it, over and over and over and over again. At one point the bird perched himself upon the fence next to the window and remained there long enough for me to get a good view of him. Clearly he was in the throes of madness, with ruffled feathers and a deranged look in his beady little bird-eyes.

But solving the mystery of the thumping has done little to eradicate the problem, as the thumping has resumed today. This appears to be the same insane bird, and today I positioned myself so that I could watch the whole process. There I sat in the hallway, watching as this lunatic thumped himself against the window once, twice, three times, four times, before flying away, only to return several minutes later and repeat the process.

Then, later this morning, I heard the thumping again but it appeared to have a different origin. To my dismay, I followed the source of the sound to the back of the apartment, where the same insane bird was now attempting to enter via the kitchen window. This time he was brazen, repeatedly flying into the window as I stood in plain view. He flew against the kitchen window with a force far greater than that which he used on the hallway window, and I can only hope that the glass stays strong until this idiot bird either gets bored or knocks himself out.

As I type this, there is a momentary lull in the thumping, but I have no doubt that it will resume soon. If and when the infernal thumping restarts, I plan to go outside and take some pictures of this avian lunatic.

Then, perhaps I will be able to accomplish my real goal, which is to return to my examination of The Parkway West Rock Thrower.