THIS MAY SOUND STUPID, but of all the things that could’ve wrecked my marriage, the thing that’s come closest is birds …That’s right, BIRDS!
My wife hates them … is scared stiff of them … and holds ME personally responsible for getting RID of them.
She dropped her first hint during our courtship, when a romantic beach walk turned into a shrieking-and-hitting-me session … all because I tried some harmless fun with a dead seagull.
She dropped her second hint on our honeymoon, when she ruined an idyllic picnic by running hysterically into a nearby toilet, crying, “DON’T EVER, EVER, EVER FEED BIRDS AGAIN!”
My adult kids still remember the day when our family bush-hike was hijacked by their mother, who suddenly screamed blue murder and cowered, terrified, in the undergrowth … not because she’d been attacked by a tribe of vicious wild boars, but because a dainty little fantail had dared to flutter briefly above her head.
I have been called upon to chase little, bewildered sparrows from our living room – “OR I’M NEVER COMING BACK INSIDE!” I have been summoned to pluck leftover feathers from a supermarket chicken – “OR I’M GONNA THROW UP!”
And here’s what’s really unfair: when I appear, her knight-in-shining-armour, hell-bent on rescuing my damsel in distress, her screeching continues – AT ME!
Look, I’m not a heartless, uncaring brute. I feel sorry for my wife. But I also feel sorry for the birds. I’m very fond of birds – and have untold bird-photos to prove it! I just wish that they and my beloved could (as Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney so eloquently put it) “… live together in perfect harmony.”
Fat chance of that, of course. The best I can hope for is that the birds which bother my wife will fly to Canada … and forget to come back.
