For the Birds.

Yesterday as I walked out of a store, I felt something wet hit my head. It was cloudy, so I figured it was starting to rain. After I walked a few steps I brushed my left palm over my hair where I’d been hit. It came back with a white streak on it. Bird shit? I remembered seeing some painters doing some work on the other side of the shopping center and wondered if it was paint. In my car I tried to wipe off the white streaks and it didn’t come off. Paint? I drove home. At a stop sign I sniffed my hand. It smelled kinda funky. Bird shit.

And it’s not the first time a bird has used me as a toilet. Once I got hit on the arm when I was about nine or ten. Several years ago a bird in a very high oak splattered my jeans slightly as I rode in the back of a pickup truck.

Try as you might, there’s simply no dignified way to walk around with bird shit in your hair. Unless, of course, you’re alone and the house is empty when you get home, which, thankfully, it was. So I rinsed it out carefully at first and then had a very long, very thorough shower.

Stupid bird.