Slice Of Life

Slice Of Life, is a Weblog (BLOG) that I write, in which I try to tell some sort of story about something, or someone in my life. Sometimes it's happy, sometimes not, sometimes informative, sometimes...... HA, gotcha, did ya think that I was going to say not? Don't know me very well, do ya? :=) I will try to update the BLOG from time to time, whenever I can.

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Location: Chandler, Arizona, United States

My personality is outgoing, I use to be a wallflower, until I realized that it was all the outgoing people that were having the most fun. It was a tough conversion, but nobody I know today would even remotely consider me to be a wallflower. Basically, when I was young, my parents taught me that if you work hard, you can accomplish anything. I haven't quite found the "anything" part to be always true, but it has inspired me to always try to do, and be, my best.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

What Is This... A Hitchcock Movie?

Do you know who Alfred Hitchcock was? If you're a fan of horror movies, then you should. Alfred Hitchcock was a Film Director, who pioneered Horror movies, and some consider him to be "The Father" of horror. And no, I don't mean the blood and gore type horror films that Directors seem to favor these days, no Hitchcock relied on suspense and story telling to scare the pants off of you. That's not to say that his movies were bloodless, but in his case, blood and gore seemed to be secondary to the story. Probably his most famous movie "Psycho"was a good example, and no, I don't mean that feeble attempt at a remake they did a few years ago, I mean the original black and white version, made by the master himself.

So, where am I going with all this? Turns out, last week, I had a "Hitchcock Moment", or at least I thought for a second I had been transported into one of his movies. Ya see, his other most famous horror movie that people remember was called "The Birds". Basically, it was a story of nature, run amok, where these large black birds invade a town, and cause all kinds of havoc with the people, while seeming to be waging all out war on humans.

One of the best scenes, is where the leading man and woman are sitting on a park bench talking about the situation. behind them is a playground with swings, and a set of what we use to call "Monkey bars", I believe they're now called Jungle Jims. It's just a welded steel bar structure that kids can climb around on. Anyway, in the scene, while they are talking, a couple of these black birds fly over them, and land on the Jungle Jim. They keep talking, while a couple more fly over, then a few more, and a few more. The couple goes on talking, and at one point, one of them looks up, notices a couple of the birds flying over, and follows their flight path until they land on the bars, and now there are HUNDREDS of those birds on the bars, and naturally mayhem soon ensues when they attack.

What's this got to do with me? Well 2 weekends ago, I had the eerie feeling I was part of that movie. Ya see, it's bird migration time around here, and one of the species that seems to trek through the Phoenix area, are these large black birds. They might be crows, but I'm no bird expert. These birds are not only about 1.5 times the size of a pigeon, but they are aggressive and fearless when it comes to humans. I first met up with one, when I caught it "dunking" a piece of dry dog food into JulieDogs outside water bowl, probably to soften it up. When I came outside to shoo it away, it didn't fly away, no, it merely flew to the top of my property fence, out of my reach and glared at me. I took 2 steps forward, it took 2 steps away. Clearly, it had no intention of being "scared away". It waited patiently until I went back inside, then flew right back to the water bowl. It apparently was not afraid of me.... At All.

So anyway, last weekend, I was cutting the grass in the back yard, while at the same time, I had the water hose dribbling at the base of one of my fruit trees to deep water it. I'm going merrily along cutting the grass, and I noticed a couple of those birds fly over and land in the tree on my neighbors property behind me. I pretty much ignored them, and finished cutting the grass, then I shut off the lawnmower, and that's when it happened.

These black birds are not silent, they make quite a bit of noise, so I turned around and looked up in the trees where the previous birds had landed, and I SWEAR, now there must have been about 100 of these birds in the 2 trees! I'm telling you, it was Just Like In The Movie! In addition about 6-10 of them had flown down to the top of the fence, and.... ALL of them were watching me! I could tell, because whenever a bird moved, it would then cock it's head to aim an eye in my direction. There were too many doing it, to be a coincidence, and remembering my encounter with the dry dog food bird, I SLOWLY backed away from the mower, and I didn't stop backing away until I was inside the house. Laugh if you want, I'm not afraid of a few dozen pigeons, but these guys are big and mean, and I didn't forget the dry dog food bird wasn't afraid of me, at all. Wanna know what they wanted?

The water. The hose watering the fruit tree, had created a small puddle around the tree, and after I was inside, a couple of the birds on the fence dropped down into the yard, and while some of them walked around "On Guard", the others drank, then some more birds came down to the fence, then, they started coming down in waves from the trees. in a moment, half of my back yard was a sea of black. I guess clean water isn't so easy to come by in the desert, eh? All I can say is, I'm glad I let them have it. If a Hungry Black Bird was so aggressive towards me just to get a bite to eat, there's no telling what a large group of "thirsty" birds might do (Whew!) . I think Hitchcock would have been pleased :-)

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