Thoughts

The Day a Bird Pooped on My Childhood

Bird Photography Outtakes
What’s truly important in your life?

You always hear people ask the question, “If your house was on fire and you had time to grab one thing, what would it be?” Most people answer with “photo album” or a family heirloom of some sort. But everyone always ends up with an answer like, “it’s all meaningless compared to the safety of your loved ones.”

This, of course, is true. But the story I’m about to tell is neither a hypothetical situation nor is it an attempt to be deep in meaning and highlight the true meaning of what’s valuable in our lives. No, this is the story that a bird got in our attic and pooped on my childhood.

gray_horizontal_breaker

First Blood

The situation all started about 3 months ago. My daughter mentioned to my wife and I that she heard some noises coming from the attic. Then, we heard a rustling sound coming from the attic. My first instinct was that of a poltergeist and believe me when I say this: I’m not one of those people that are super into horror flicks to actually WANT to have a spirit in my home. No. I’m one of those people that are super into horror flicks that it is the first thing that comes to mind.

crazy_ratThe second thing that came to mind was a vicious rodent. And by vicious, I mean a larger than normal rat with rabies, red glowing eyes, and a sticky substance dripping from its fangs. Yes, it has fangs.

Anyway, I was super nervous walking up the stairs to the attic and it didn’t help matters that i was unarmed. I had no idea what I was in for so I grabbed the only weapon I could find: a rubber mallet. You know, the kind that you use to pound in a wooden stake into a ground. It would have to do.

As I walked up the stairs I could hear the rustling some more. I knew it would either be a wrinkly ghost-like woman in a ghost nightgown or something with wings. Fortunately, it was the latter. Unfortunately it bee-lined for me.

Here’s the part in the story where I will tell you what it felt like happened and then I’ll tell you what probably happened.

kill-bill1

Scenario 1: The Legend

As the bird flew towards me I noticed it had the wingspan of a condor! I looked at it straight in the eyes, and swung the rubber mallet at it like a samurai delivering a beautiful death. I’m talking Uma Thurman in Kill Bill type of bladework.

Arsenio_AHHHHR

Scenario 2: The Reality

As the bird flew towards me I closed my eyes and swung the rubber mallet back and forth like I was swatting bees. It happened to clip the bird.

Whether it was graceful or not the bird was knocked dead. Killed by my deadly blow.

Payback

Fast forward to last week. My wife went upstairs to the attic and saw a bird poop massacre. I found out about it by seeing her Facebook status:
Screen Shot 2013-08-15 at 4.45.40 PM

Apparently, the attic defenses were breached again and this time, the bird came armed with enough firepower to destroy our stuff. It was on the walls, the floor, on boxes, on windows, on toys, on old lampshades, filing cabinets, everything!

If it had surface area it was tagged. It was a Sicilian message, “All of Greg and Heather’s stuff sleeps with the fishes.”

As it tried to get out of the attic it seemed to dive bomb into every window spraying it with bullets in the process.
poop_window

It covered boxes of things with even distribution. (thankfully, the boxes were sealed.)
boxes_poop

Basically, it pooped all over my childhood.

Fortunately, it didn’t get everything. I was super stoked to see some of my prized possessions were spared. As i ran up the stairs of the attic I saw my Newton (still in packaging) peeking out like a single flower peaking out of a bomb site.
newton

And my box of Hot Wheels, Transformers, and GI Joe’s managed to avoid the fire too.
hotwheels_transformers

The Cleanup

The cleanup is not completed. There are still areas of the subfloor in our unfinished attic that still needs some scrubbing. And while some of the stuff in boxes were protected, the boxes are toast and we need to transfer everything into new boxes. We’re going through a lot of Krud Kutter!
krud_kutter
Krud Kutter actually lists “bird droppings” in the list of what it cleans!

The other issue is figuring out how they are getting into our house. Upon visual inspection, it doesn’t appear that any of our soffit vents are compromised. Hopefully we can determine the cause before we get attacked again! Until then, we will cross our fingers and begin the clean up process!

Gregory Ng

GOAL: Visit 100 National Parks as a family by 2020. Favorite Parks: Zion National Park, Mt Rainier National Park, Valley Forge National Historical Park

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
Twitter

Comments

comments