The Birds!

This afternoon as I was sitting outside wondering just where, oh where the cat had gotten to, a flock of crows was circling and landing in the cemetary. I suspected that this was a sign that Timothy was not around. Although those big birds could probably have done him a heap of harm.

I have never liked crows. When I was about four we lived in a house at the top of Strawberry Hill Road. Ours was the only yard on that part of the street and it was the logical place for birds to land. My mother had sent me outside to play. At the time she had three children, I was the oldest. I am sure she just needed SOMEBODY to go do something else while she was dealing with diapers and breastfeeding and all the rest.

But those birds SCARED me. To a little girl, they looked huge! And to a little girl it seemed that the birds were not looking for seeds or bugs, they were looking for little girls to attack! I can remember standing at the front door unable to get in. I am quite sure that my mother had not locked me out, she's not that kind of person. But I couldn't get the door open and I was being attacked by malicious, evil, big black birds! Eventually she let me in. I'm guessing she was in another part of the house or running the vacuum or something, but I was being attacked!

Even now I am not inclined to watch showings of Hitchcock's "The Birds." It gives me the willies! In its article on Tippi Hedren, Wikipedia says,

For the harrowing final attack scene in a second-floor bedroom, filmed on a closed set at Universal-International Studios, Hedren had been assured by Hitchcock that mechanical birds would be used. Instead, Hedren endured five solid days of prop men, protected by thick leather gloves, flinging dozens of live gulls, ravens and crows at her (their beaks clamped shut with elastic bands). Cary Grant visited the set and told Hedren, "I think you're the bravest lady I've ever met." In a state of exhaustion, when one of the birds gouged her cheek and narrowly missed her eye, Hedren sat down on the set and began crying. A physician ordered a week's rest, which Hedren said at the time was riddled with "nightmares filled with flapping wings".
I hear you Tippi! And that's my silliness for the day. The cat's at home. The birds have gone to roost. Bug Man is watching football and calling his mom. Soda Chicky is home from church choir practice and has plugged back into her Ipod. All is right with the world.