The Dead Bird Massacre

Well, every day the title of this blog seems to become more and more the theme of my life. It's my fault really; I accept full responsibility.

Today's obstruction resulted in about 16 frantic phone calls (only one that was answered) as well as a series of major emotional and psychological meltdowns all involving some kind of fear that's probably the result of an experience I had one summer morning when I was 14 and I went to take a drink out of a water bottle and realized too late that there was a giant centipede on the end which got half-way down my throat before my body sent itself into violent convulsions, that the government would duplicate if they could find a way, to choke it back out, followed by running around the neighborhood in a paranoid frantic daze, screaming the pangs of death for 25 minutes or so.

The "centipede experience" (for simplicity "CE"), if we agree to blame today's catastrophe on it, I believe coerced some part of my inner-psyche into adopting a determined fear of every living animal and most definitely for dead ones. Some of this probably explains much of my fear of commitment in dating but for brevity and public safety, we'll explore that topic another day.

With that understanding in mind, you are prepared to conceivably imagine my dismay upon coming across a dead bird lying face down in my parent's grass as I mowed the lawn earlier today. I took one quick look at it and decided that this time I was going to be a man. This dead bird couldn't hurt me and I was going to get a shovel, scoop it up, and throw it away; sucking it up into the mower didn't seem feasible at the time for those of you who were wondering. But about the time I retrieved the longest shovel I could find in the state of Utah, the doubt and absolute panic set in resulting in the 16 frantic phone calls here-to-for mentioned. Most of the numbers I tried were to phones suspiciously turned off and it wasn't until I got to the "W's" that I was finally able to get ahold of Uncle Will who promptly answered on the second ring and then sat in his car walking me through the experience commenting that he was rather surprised by the sound of panic in my voice and criticizing my initial description of the "GIGANTIC dead rotting bird with bugs all over it" which he believed was misleading after I told him that the bird was "so big! It's almost the size of a baseball!"

The shovel tragically didn't get under the bird very well and actually broke it into a few pieces, causing me to run screaming into the house no less than 4 times before Uncle Will finally talked me into getting the job done. Two long sticks, a pair of oversized gloves, several thick sheets of newspaper used to cover the bird so I couldn't see it and one giant snow shovel later, the bird somehow got onto the first shovel by itself. Really. I ran in screaming after the bird broke into a few pieces and when I came back out, each piece was neatly organized on the shovel. I'm not sure if it was my guardian angel. If it was, I thank you. If it wasn't, where the heck were you?!!?

Finally I walked it to the garbage and dropped it in, after which I thoroughly covered it with two bags of thick grass. Then Uncle Will told me to go in and drink some water. Partly because he thought I was suffering from heat stroke but also because he doesn't want to relive the last two days of our trip. But I don't think he's aware of the underlying issue: the CE.