Broken Wing

Bird tricks

I'm moving in to my new place tomorrow and I'm very excited about it. As I mentioned before, we still haven't decided who gets the bigger room. What I didn't mention is that there is also a perk to the smaller room.

The smaller room has a small balcony coming off of it. It's tiny, maybe four feet by four feet, but it could be somewhat useful. I was thinking if I had this room it might be nice to put some plants out there, maybe a hanging flower pot, some small potted plants on the ground, and a smidgen of weed. This would give my balcony a touch of class, at the risk of giving evidence to those who already question my sexuality.

The only problem I can think of with this plan is those damned birds. My parents hang potted plants out on their front porch, and every year some mangy flying rodents settle in them. Instead of seeing this as a negative though, I could use it as an opportunity for scientific discovery and an outlet for my bird hating. Here is the plan: I'll set up some potted plants with bright bird-attracting colors. Then I wait for a bird to nest. Once it has nested, I wait for it to pop out some eggs. Next, I wait for the bird to fly off and get food, leaving its unprotected eggs. Okay, so far I know the plan mainly involves waiting, but its about to get interesting.

When the bird is gone, I will go outside to its nest, dump the eggs out (or take them inside and scramble them), and replace them with giant plastic easter eggs. You may think there is no way even a stupid bird could fall for this, but as I've mentioned previously, the cuckoo bird does something very similar to this already.

There are precautions I must take, however. When I am going outside to do the dirty deed, I will wear a tuxedo and a motorcycle helmet, in case the bird returns. There are two reasons for this. First, if the bird sees me stealing its eggs, it might get angry. I don't want the bird to be able to recognize me if it sees me sometime later, say in the grocery store or at the club. The tuxedo and helmet is sufficiently different from my usual outfit of pink hotpants and Gap Kids tank top so that the bird will consider the outfits as two distinct people. The second reason for the outfit is protection. Birds have sharp beaks, and they will peck you in the eyes with them on a whim, leaving you blind, especially if you are stealing their offspring. A motorcycle helmet protects me from birds attacking my eyes, and also makes me look cool for once. Why does it have to be a tuxedo? Well, I own one, and I don't really have any other opportunities to wear it.

Back to the plan. Once the plastic eggs are in the nest, the bird will try sitting on them. First it will be uncomfortable, because the fake eggs will be so much bigger than real ones. More importantly, plastic eggs will never hatch! I can't help but wonder, if the bird really was fooled, how long would it sit on eggs that are lifeless? Would the bird sit on them well past the expected birthdate, say well into winter? That would be astounding. If I get the small room, and I get this plan in motion, I will set up a webcam pointed at the nest so everybody can check it out. This is going to be amazing. The only thing that would be better is if I took the birds eggs inside, kept them warm, and then hatched them myself. I would raise them as children, then when they got old enough I would take them to my window and show the parent (still sitting on a plastic easter egg, mind you) what I've done with its offspring. Finally, they would be trained to seek out and kill other birds in my neighborhood. Okay, sorry, I guess that's getting a little crazy. Posted by mill1991 at August 26, 2004 04:18 PM