Hostile Takeover

So. I have a bird problem. More specifically, birds have now taken over our storage room, and are multiplying as I type this. This situation is not good, y'all. I am totally cool with birds in their natural habitat, aka outside. In nature. But in-freaking-side? NOT cool. In my storage room? Even more not cool. This all started a couple of weeks ago when the husband pointed out that there was a bird's nest on top of the light fixture in there. Oh, that's kinda cute, I thought. I pondered how a bird could have possibly gotten in there to build said nest, since the only door that is ever opened in there is the one into our actual house, and I definitely think I would have noticed a bird coming and going in my living room. Oh, right! Back when we moved here and the air conditioner didn't work and our jackass landlord hired some guy of equal jackassness to put in a new unit? Yeah. Guy left a gaping hole on one side of the air conditioner, which has now apparently become an Avian Super Highway straight into our storage room. So, cute. A bird's nest! I didn't think anything of it. When I went out into that room, I always kinda clapped my hands to warn the mama bird of my arrival, and she would fly out of the hole until I had left. We had an understanding: this is MY house, and I will come into my own damn storage room whenever I feel like it, and YOU, bird, will kindly fly away when I am present. I am bigger than you, Bird, and I win. It was working well...for a week. Then I started hearing little itty bitty chirping noises when I went out there. Awwwww! Baby BIRDS! I couldn't actually see them, as the nest was up too high, but I sure could hear them. Adorable! Our peace treaty was still intact...mama bird would fly away when I entered the room, leaving me to move boxes or get some ice out of the refrigerator in there in peace. All of this peaceful coexisting has stopped today. All bets are off. I innocently turned the handle on the storage room door, needing to go in there to find some cleaning supplies. What I was met with was sheer terror: Birds, everywhere, hundreds of them. Okay, maybe not hundreds. Maybe more like ten. But still, TEN! Ten birds, that are what I can only assume are the babies that were chirping away just days ago, now swarming around like rabid, diseased bats on crack. These baby birds are apparently not intelligent enough to understand the terms of our peace agreement: Human enters, Birds fly away for a minute, Human leaves, Birds can return. Instead they are flying about furiously and incompetently, swooping and diving and running into walls and furniture. This presented a problem for me: I really, really wanted to clean while Charlie was napping, and I really, really needed that scrub brush in that room. But at what cost? I asked myself. Being attacked by these ferocious, seemingly drunk baby birds? Having them go straight for my eyeballs and leaving me blind (which is a really for real fear of mine regarding birds. Really.)? The obsessive need to scrub my shower won, so I did the only logical thing I could think of. I grabbed a broom and, waving it about like someone either having a seizure or fighting off a dragon, swatted and slapped at the tiny baby birds flying around my head. I didn't actually make contact with any of them, but in my mind I at least kept the little monsters at bay for a few moments. I grabbed the scrub brush thing and retreated as fast as I could, still swinging the broom in a blind frenzy of terror. As I approached the door, I had that feeling that you get when you pull your feet up off the floor to get into bed at night: like maybe, just maybe something like a pair of hands was going to swipe at your feet and grab your ankles and drag you somewhere, under the bed, possibly. I haven't thought that particular fear out past the part about some hands grabbing my feet. But still, you know that feeling. Like you just barely escaped certain death by pulling your feet up fast enough. Except in this case I had just barely escaped certain death at the hands (beaks? wings?) of The Birds. I slammed the door shut, out of breath and feeling all tingly with adrenaline, maybe making a sound like "Arghuhhhllmmbbbl" as I reached the safety of the inside hallway. I won! I had beaten an army of...baby birds. Really, they are each about the size of a lemon. Maybe. Probably even smaller. I then stood there in the hallway, feeling like a moron, replaying my pas de deux with the ten baby sparrows or whatever the hell they are. I probably overreacted, running through the storage room waving my broom about like a mentally challenged person on fire. So. That has been my day so far. Just thought I would share.