I hate birds.

When I was little, my dad used to take me to Hines Park to feed the ducks and geese. Getting all dressed up in my rain boots to squish around by the creeks and ponds to feed bits of bread to quacking ducks was my favorite thing to do.

It stopped being my favorite thing to do the day that an ornery goose bit me on the face because I had run out of bread.

My dad kicked it, and it flew away, squawking. Ever since then I have had a deep fear of birds.

They're just so. . . foreign. Their DNA is so far removed from our own that I can't even relate to them. You can't read a bird. They are like tiny, feathery dinosaurs, and that is TERRIFYING to me.

Oh yes, I like tiny, fluffy, hoppy birds. They're cute to look at. So long as they're not within a foot of any part of my body, I'm fine with tiny birds.

It's the big ones I seem to have a problem with.

My boyfriend in tenth grade had a bird-- a big, loud cockatoo named Spanky that used to belong to his brother. For the longest time we all thought Spanky was a boy, mostly because Lee (the brother) had never really bothered to check. And anyway, how exactly do you check something like that on a bird?

You know what, never mind. I'm okay not knowing.

Spanky was out of his cage a lot, which really bothered me, particularly because there was a baby and two other pets in the house (a lizard, I think, and a big, beefy, totally bad-ass cat named Frisket). He couldn't fly, so he would just walk around slowly, staring intently at people with his head cocked to one side, like he was thinking about which veins to sever.

Everybody else seemed to be okay with this, so no matter how much I begged Andrew to just put Spanky in his damn cage when I was over, he would always just laugh and say I had nothing to be afraid of. Occasionally he would pick Spanky up and kind of launch him at me, thinking it was hilarious to watch me freak out. What a swell guy.

One night, about a week before Christmas, I went over to Andrew's house to help him decorate the tree. While he was assembling the actual tree part, I went into the living room, where Spanky's cage was. The hatch was closed, so I felt safe enough to sit down on the couch (as far away from the cage as I could be) and watch TV with Andrew's mom.

Suddenly, the hatch to Spanky's cage opened, and Spanky hopped out onto the floor, staring at me unblinkingly. It hadn't been locked, just closed.

My illusion of safety was shattered.














What you see there is no joke. Spanky got out of his cage, hopped up onto the couch, and leapt at my face.

I jumped up and started flapping my arms and screaming something along the lines of "OHMYGODTHEREISABIRDONMYFACE GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF", with Spanky hanging from my face, and also flapping and screaming. After about five minutes of this Andrew finally seemed to notice that there was something going on, and came into the living room to find me running around in circles with a gigantic cockatoo attached to my face, and his mom doubled over in her chair laughing.

I should mention, his mom never liked me.

He yanked Spanky off my face (tearing a chunk out of my cheek in the process, because the bird had such a firm grip) and threw him back in his cage, actually locking the door this time, and that year I got to go to all my family Christmas parties with a big infected-looking bird bite an inch below my eye.

The next time Andrew's family took Spanky in to the vet, Andrew explained to her what had happened with me, and she told him that Spanky was actually a girl, and she probably attacked me because she was under the impression that Andrew was her mate.

I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

Yep, Spanky thought that Andrew was her mate. Spanky was a bunny-boiler.

Because birds are CRAZY.

Actually, I would like to amend that; I have known one nice bird in my life. His name was Phantom, and he was my aunt Debbie's bird. You know what was so great about Phantom? He sat on his perch when company was over, and waited until no one was around to start talking. And even then, he would just say quietly to himself, "Phantom's a pretty bird."

Phantom is fine. Every other domesticated bird can go die in a fire.