I (heart) nature

Last night, around 1:30, I'd just finished watching an episode of Blind Date and was becoming very, very sleepy. I turned the TV off, closed my eyes and.. realized an obnoxious bird was warbling its little heart out from a tree approximately six feet from my window. Yes, at night, in the pitch-black darkness of a street lamp-less neighborhood.

What the hell kind of bird chirps at night, I asked myself. Interestingly, I'd recently seen Failure To Launch with Matthew McConaughey (yum) and one of the subplots centering around Zooey Deschanel's character involved insomnia brought on by a mockingbird that persisted in singing at night.

I'm convinced that my culprit is a mockingbird, too, for as I listened to him, I realized he varied his chirping every few seconds. Every few minutes, he would fall silent, and I'd fervently hope that he'd exhausted his repertoire, but each time, he'd again begin his song with renewed vigor.

Now, I love animals. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a vet until my dad told me that I'd have to put them to sleep. And I enjoy nature extensively - personally, I could never imagine living in a concrete jungle. But last night, as sleep eluded me and the twittering outside seemed to penetrate my very skull, I imagined all sorts of solutions: shooting him (as Zooey did), hurling a brick at him, and, when I realized that I didn't have a brick, some other blunt and possibly injurious object.

As it turned out, I simply went out on the front porch. As I approached his tree, the bird issued a couple of questioning chirps. I grabbed a handful of branches and shook the shit out of that tree. I didn't see him fly away, but the godforsaken noise stopped and I finally went to sleep.

Maybe it's time to start letting my cat outside again.