We have grackles*. They give me the willies. I don't know why exactly, but most of my feelings (positive or negative) toward animals is irrational. The point is just that I hate them.
Lately, I've seen the black ones (males) bullying the brown ones (females). The males keep ruffling their feathers and screaming and chasing away the females. At first it made me mad because, well, domestic violence, right? But then I had a "welcome to life" moment.
Have you ever had a moment like that? I was not raised in a bubble, and yet I blocked out as much unpleasantness of real life as possible. As I've gotten older I have these moments where I have some realization that a normal person would've intrinsically known. For example, I'm listening to a song I listened to in high school and suddenly think, "Wait, that's what this song means???"
Anyway, the point is I realized the birds are not bullying. I asked my brother about it (he majored in wild life sciences) and sure enough, they are mating. Mating!! I'm my backyard! Ech. I'm both disgusted by their shenanigans and horrified at the thought of more grackles.
So I've taken to chasing them out when I catch them. Sometimes I just pound on the window, but I did a dumb thing the other night. I had just had enough and I opened the back door to yell, "Go do it in someone else's yard!!!" Then I realized if the grackles could hear me, so could the neighbors. Probably, I'm now the crazy, prude neighbor. Which was always true, but now they know.
*For most of my life I thought they were called "drackles." It made sense because it reminded me of Dracula, who is also dark and sinister. I've never seen my mom and brother laugh so hard as when they realized what I'd been saying.
3 comments:
I hate when I yell things and then realize others can hear me:) I also hate "welcome to life" experinces.
My nephew was obsessed with nature when he was little. He used to talk about all kinds of things in the wild, and one of the words he used that was particularly jarring (since he was only 6 years old) was mating. He would go on for a while about some random species of frog where the males would puff up their throats or some other thing to attract the females during mating season.
I'm pretty sure that kid had no idea the real point to all that "mating" behavior, and I'm pretty glad he was still in the dark at that age.
I read this post a while ago, but thought of you and your blog when I saw a common grackle mating ritual in the backyard today. I found it rahter interesting (what more is there to do when I am tied down to the couch while nursing a baby?) watching the male puff up and stalk the female who acted totally non-interested. Anyway, I thought of you and how you would have been yelling at the birds doing their dance!
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