Feathered Foes aka the bird essay

“Feed the birds, tuppence a bag, tuppence, tuppence, tupppence a bag.” These Mary Poppins bedtime lyrics carry a warm, fuzzy feeling with them for many children. One might even venture that they are “practically perfect in every way.” They calmed Jane and Michael and, I suppose, you’d expect that they hold the same tender place in my heart. WRONG! I’ve never heard a more terror-provoking song in my life. This one goes right down in the books as a nightmare cleverly hidden by rhyme and innocent voices next to Ring-Around the Rosie (You know, the jolly, dance-accompanied nursery rhyme about the Bubonic plague!).

I shall forever remember the horror and anticipatory dread that filled my soul on the day our study abroad group got to tour St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. I had no problem leaning as far out over the top of the dome as the impeding bars would allow, or climbing the steep steps that others thought would lead them to their doom. Oh no, those were nothing. It was lunch I was afraid of—lunch on the “feed the birds steps” of St. Paul’s.

The Plan: Eat anything a bird might even think about eating inside in the catacombs of the basement, then, very, very reluctantly meet the rest of the group on the stairs.

ü Eat pita.

ü Crackers.

ü Crisps.

ü Cover head.

ü Pray.

With every step of the plan enacted and the designated meeting time drawing nearer and nearer by the second, I located my inhaler in my pack and headed out into the sunshine to face my inevitable doom—death by bird.

I spent the next 15 minutes surrounded by my friends feeding birds and beckoning them closer as I sat hugging my knees to my chest and my hood over my head haunted by bad experiences. My earliest memory of being attacked by a bird was when I was about four years old, at some sort of farm or petting zoo with a lot of my extended family. My older cousins had been tormenting a turkey. At this point in my life, dogs were the only every-day animals that scared me and I was wandering around the other birds not yet aware of the potential danger of fraternizing with foul fowl.

As the giant, walking-Pilgrim-dinner came squawking around the corner, I was the innocent victim of a livid bipedal, warm-blooded, oviparous vertebrate animal. I was knocked off my feet with one swift blow and then he started pecking at me. I was dirty and hurt and traumatized for life.

One of my particularly scarring attacks happened when I was 18, on a date in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The harbor is always filled with boats and is the home to many fabulous restaurants and the National Aquarium. My high school boyfriend, Devon, wanted to take me out for a fun day on the harbor before we said goodbye and I headed off to Utah for college. We decided to eat on one of the decks of the restaurant we went to. As the meal progressed, I started to notice more and more seagulls and pigeons swooping down to grab food from the abandoned tables around us on the deck. I started to tense up and Devon, knowing my ornithophobia, tried to comfort me and said that we could go inside as soon as we were done. As we rose from our seats, I noticed a kid pestering a pigeon near the door. He had bothered it to the point of retaliation and the winged demon was poised for attack as we came closer to the door. With wings flapping and taloned feet pushed forward, the pigeon came at the boy with an awful, squawking war cry. The boy ducked and in the confusion the pigeon ended up tangled in my hair and pecking at my head for a good 15 seconds. I started to hyperventilate and I ended up having an asthma attack when my inhaler was at home, 35 minutes away.

Another time, I was walking down the streets of San Antonio, heading towards the Alamo when a random pigeon swooped down, pecked my head, and pulled my hair with its beak as it flew away. There was no provocation, no rhyme or reason as to why I was chosen for the fly-by pecking over my taller companion other than birds are pure evil and always after me. They are programmed from birth, it seems, to assault me when the most emotional damage can be done. Like the young boys of Sparta they are trained from birth to attack their enemies; and, for reasons unbeknownst to me, these winged warriors have chosen me as their victim.

Some of my most harrowing encounters have not ended in attacks, though the potential was there, and I was saved by my own paranoid reactions of covering my head or screaming as I run under some cover. Many people, especially those nearest and dearest to me, find great joy in seeing me feel scared and laugh at the trauma that a near-death experience with birds puts me through.

When our study abroad group first arrived in London, we hiked about in Kensington Gardens after getting off the train. We found the designated meeting point, the Peter Pan statue, where our professor John would meet us with our underground passes. As I sat on a bench quietly minding my own business and eating my lunch, my “friend” Kimberly decided to attract all the birds closer to us by feeding them in the hopes of leading a full fledged battle—Melissa vs. The Birds. Dozens, hundreds, thousands flocked to enlist with their blonde general and all my other fellow students who had decided to sacrifice some of their lunch to feed the devil’s front line troops. I was freaking out, but worst of all I was trapped. With trees behind me, a pond beside me, and a swarm of ravenous fiends on all my other sides, I realized there was no where to escape, and I went into fits of squealing as their population grew exponentially. Cornered, surrounded like the Continental Army in New York City in 1776, I had to find some way to escape the certain attack and crescendoing terror. With each squeal the satanic beasts seemed to mirror their leaders’ taunting cackles. I found myself reversing the battle techniques we had learned about in the castles we had visited. When surrounding a fortress or castle, all the dominating army had to do was wait and starve their captives out. In my mind it came down to this—defeat when I had to succumb to my dire need to find a toilet or to come out victorious by reversing the techniques and waiting for my friends to run out of supplies to feed my captors. Whose motivation was greater—the birds’ to molest me or mine to avoid wetting my trousers? Thank goodness that, as their supplies ran out, the troops dwindled and a group was off in search of a toilet in the park, so I had escorts to cover my flight from the bench.

London, with all her art and splendor, great Indian food, and fabulous shopping has one great downfall—ALL THOSE BIRDS! Many of my companions were looking forward to touring the Tower of London because they had been reading about the wives of Henry VIII on the side. There were a lot of things there that I wanted to see too, but my guidebook had put a damper on my spirits when I read about the tower a few weeks before our visit. There were giant, scary ravens guarding the tower. And, after all those years of pecking on all those people who had been beheaded on the tower green, the ravens who guard the tower had inherited a taste for human flesh.

Page 136 of Fodor’s Guide to London 2007 read, “Don’t get too close to the ravens: they are prone to pecking and not particularly fond of humans, unless you are the Tower’s Raven Master.” That’s reassuring! I really want to wander around the tower green with birds that are PRONE to pecking. A frequent victim and attack ravens—not my idea of a winning combination! The book goes on to describe the ravens’ diet of blood-soaked biscuits and meat. These black, ominous flesh-eaters are also described as “territorial.” Add to all of that my previous history of attacks and the fact that everyone is out to get obnoxious American tourists. I knew I was doomed!

Thankfully, I spent most of the afternoon without seeing any of the ravens, but sure enough some crazy tourists started throwing bread and a larger-than-life raven swooped past my head too close for comfort. I took shelter in the Waterloo Barracks. It seemed like my safest bet because of the added security surrounding the crown jewels. As an ode to my terror and to one of my favorite American authors, I penned my own version of “The Raven.”

Full of feathers, always squawking at my golden head come knocking

Devils that delight in flocking to terrorize me by the shore,

O’er my head they’re always plunging, etern’ly threat’ning with their lunging

Horrid monsters hov’ring, waiting for a chance to peck my head till sore

‘Will it ever stop?’ I ask, ‘Will I e’er be fearless out of doors?’

Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’

People call my fear irrational and a lot of people get good laughs out of my reactions. I personally find the fear completely rational: birds have attacked me more than once and, therefore, I am afraid of it happening again. To me, unless they’ve actually been trapped in a small space before, someone who is claustrophobic has more cause for being called irrational than I do. So, I feel completely justified in covering my head when flocks come flapping over head, waiting outside as my friends tour a bird house at the zoo, and walking a half block out of my way to avoid the duck pond on the south end of campus.