The Birds

Around this time for the past few years, the Bubbleboy Bathroom Experience at the homestead changes. No, it doesn't have anything to do with the amount of soapy buildup on the shower doors (Although, I am not happy about that at all and will continue my quest for a cleaning solvent that effectively cuts through the Dove-soapy-muck without producing toxic vapors that also effectively kill more of my heavily-taxed braincells). It doesn't have anything to do with the month of May being "Bubbleboy Q-tip re-stock Month" (two ear swabs used post-shower, per day equals 730 ... yet Q-tips are sold in boxes of 300, 500, and 750, making the calculation of box overlap during "Bubbleboy Q-tip re-stock Month" very important). And it doesn't have anything to do with the warm-ish outside temperatures that prevent the Bubbleboy Furnace System from pre-heating the bathroom each morning, preventing the mirror fog-up issue that further amplifies an already unnecessarily complex Bubbleboy Morning Preparation Mental Checklist each day. It's none of those things.

May is the month the birds move into the outside duct work of my dormant bathroom exhaust fan.

I usually hear the winged fluttering of would-be squatters checking out the place in late April. This time of year must be quite busy for avian real estate agents and their clients alike. Imagine the pressure they face, having just flown some 2,000 miles from a winter home in Boca Raton, with the seemingly implausible prospect of finding a worthy mate and a suitable place to start a family in just a few short weeks time. Imagine their horror upon returning to Buffalo this year to find half the timeshares they left behind last September have either been torn down, or were so mangled by the October Surprise ice storm that they are now completely unlivable.

I'm surprised more birds haven't abandoned this city altogether. After all, so many of their friends and neighbors have begun wonderful lives in the suburbs. With its vast forests, carefully conceived (and easily avoidable) network of power lines, and a wide array of cars with open convertible tops and sunroofs driving on roads free of any and all of the buggersome old-growth tree cover that can make city streets such a challenge, the 'burbs provide a plethora of opportunities for recreational target practice SPLAT fly-overs. Many suburban birds even brag that their offspring learn more, get smarter, and grow up to become more successful than those whose young were educated in the city. While that claim may be true for some, if the number of window collisions and other daft calculations that occur with some frequency at my parent's suburban home is any indication, it is safe to report that some birds are just retarded, and it has nothing to do with where they grew up.

Still, the choice to live in the city, with its many and varied challenges (and the occasional, yet utterly senseless backlot murders at the hands of Lee Ling Li, near-sighted head wok chef at Number 1 China take-out) is not always an easy one. So, in early May, when the occasional sounds of fluttering wings becomes a nearly continuous bombardment of birdy noise pollution emanating from my bathroom exhaust vent, I do what few bubbleboys in my situation would: I embrace it.

There is something to be said for a contrived daily morning routine. It keeps me sane and assists in dealing with those events that may come later, for which I have no control. I don't shower the minute I wake up every morning, but most days I do. Following the shower is always a two-Q-tip-ear-spin, and a shave-every-other-day-unless-work-or-social-responsibly-deems-otherwise ritual, though. This is typically followed by a banana, Carnation Instant Breakfast (chocolate, of course, and mixed with 12 ounces of two-percent organically-produced milk in the most un-smug way possible). Then, eating the banana, I gaze out the front window of my second-floor abode at the sheer number of people who have seemingly been awake for hours, go about their own early morning routine with such purpose and damned awe-inspiring verve, that a banana-eating, Carnation-Instant-Breakfast-drinking, window-gawking bubbleboy can only wonder about it in dumbfounded amazement. Watching the moms and random dads in a mad, pre-work dash, dropping their children off at the daycare/preschool building across the street each day is, without a doubt, the event offering the greatest amount of comic fodder and morning enjoyment for me. That every one of these kids has the innate ability to locate, and proceed to douse their clean sneakers in to, the tiniest patch of mud next to a completely dry stretch of perfectly good paved sidewalk, all while being energetically towed by the arm into the front door of the preschool, is truly one of the unsolved mysteries of the child's brain.

I let this carefully considered and rather comfortable daily routine evolve a bit in May, though, knowing how tough it must be for birds trying to make a go of it in the city. When I hear the fluttering of wings, I make no effort to discourage their choice of my bathroom fan exhaust vent as their home and love nest for 2007 (the fan has been inoperable for years anyway). The birds move in. The birds make babies. The baby birds never shut up about being hungry. They argue over the remote, complain that one keeps touching the other even though mom said to stop it or else, and any number of other things that baby birds never shut up about. And so it goes each and every morning until late June when the kids finally leave the nest, and the parents can spend the brief, but relaxing time that remains of summer looking for bridge partners (get it? Bridge partners?) before they return to Boca Raton for the winter, and Bubbleboy's morning routine becomes much more routine, once again.

I wish them all the luck and good fortune that this world can possibly offer. I welcome them to live in peace and prosper just outside my bathroom wall each spring. I just wish the kids would contract a non-life-threatening, but very effective case of laryngitis is all.

Is that so wrong?