I cried all the way home from work today. It was the second crying spell today and the third this week. And it's all because of birds.
Until last December, the company I work for occupied all three units of a one-story building at the end of a dead-end street. North of us there's a huge schoolyard; across the street an even bigger meadow; there are trees and shrubs along all the boundaries, making the area quite a haven for wildlife.
In December our company changed hands and downsized, and those of use who remained moved into the unit where I'd been working all along. The center unit was rented to a retail brew-it-yourself company, and the far unit to someone else for storage.
There wasn't any trouble during the winter. In the big juniper tree in front of our unit one bird feeder with generic birdseed brought mostly house sparrows but also red-winged blackbirds, chickadees, twinkling brown-headed cowbirds, grackles, white-crowned sparrows, an annoying group of pigeons - and cardinals. A much newer finch feeder - my gift to a co-worker - was strangely abandoned during the cold months, but goldfinches came flocking at the first hint of spring. Peanut bits brought frenzied flocks of starlings as well as squirrels and many of the other birds, and squirrels and bluejays came begging for peanuts in the shell. We were particularly pleased to be feeding the jays, knowing they had been decimated by West Nile virus.
Canadian geese had been a persistent problem for years, but last fall I noticed that one pair seemed to have staked their territory on our lot and were chasing all others away. It seemed like a good idea to have just two geese relieving themselves in front of our building instead of 10 or 15, so two of us encouraged them with some cracked corn. In the spring, as soon as the snow melted from the tree stump that was their "table," the pair of geese returned - and all the trouble started.
The brew-it-yourself people started bitching to the landlord about goose feces on the lot, and I was told not to feed the geese any more. Well, any fool could predict what would happen next, and it did: the geese who had been sitting across the street, and in the grass to the south of us, and in the schoolyard, started roaming into our area as well, because the two stopped protecting their territory. It was raining a lot, and our parking lot floods easily - geese love to grub into muddy grass for food. But back they went to the landlord - it was all the fault of the bird feeder! Ri-i-ight - these geese are all over an area about 300 feet square because of a feeder that spills a little millet around in in a circle maybe four feet in diameter.
Well, this past Monday I got to work and found that the regular feeder, the finch feeder and the water container I had purchased and set out - all were gone. Just gone.
You can imagine how furious I was, but I had to sit on my anger until Tuesday when the landlord came in and I confronted him. But he knew nothing about it and went off to investigate. A short time later he was back and everything went to hell.
An employee of the brew-it-yourself company stole the feeders because he was so angry about the geese. He had destroyed them. The company's owner then joined us and out of the blue started complaining that squirrels were coming into his unit through the front door because they smelled his casks of grain. Well, of course they are coming in, you idiot - you've been leaving your front door wide open all day long with no screen door, what do you expect? But now the landlord, who can't stand yelling and who can yell louder than anyone else, raises his voice and drowns out all competition and says THAT'S IT. NO MORE FEEDING OF ANY ANIMALS. PERIOD.
To do him credit, he paid me himself for the feeders, but after thinking it over, I gave the money back. He didn't steal them. I couldn't take his money.
So I can't feed thistle seed to goldfinches because some moron doesn't know the habits of Canadian geese.
I sit by the front windows, where I had a view of the bird feeders, the meadow, the open sky. Now I have to keep all the blinds closed - I can't bear to see out. Cardinals land on the bench where they're used to picking up peanut bits and cock their heads, piping; sparrows haunt the branches of the juniper in confusion; squirrels climb up on the rocks and stand up, looking in at me, begging.
By the front door sits about $75 worth of seed and peanuts I bought and can't use ... and next door a stupid jerk must think he's really something special to have gotten his way by stealing someone else's property and denying food to songbirds.
Now I'm crying again.
I mean - I don't have much of a life, really. I go to work; I come home and fight with myself, or escape from myself; I go to sleep. I've loved my job this year and that has been glorious - but it's not the same job with the blinds closed. The view was part of whole. Now I might as well be working in some lifeless basement.
