The Birds

So I watched The Birds again tonight. It was on behind the Westville, our community monthly walk in theatre. It was cold, and lightning flashed occasionally, and M kept leaving me alone with the lesbians in their deck chairs, and I was terrified. The first time I saw The Birds I think I was about 11; I watched it on TV with my mom. I was so scared I dreamt about it for weeks.

Now I am, for all intents and purposes, a grown up, and The Birds, which is older than I am (okay, only by a few months) should be laughable. M found it hysterical. It scared the piss out of me yet again. I had, in fact, to leave. I had to walk back to the bar and toss back a beer or two to calm myself down. The entire time, though, I was thinking about how badly Tippi Hedron and whoever that extremely cute guy was were handling the whole thing. I mean, did they have no basements in that town? M says, no flamethrowers?

When we got home I had a brief anti-bird, zombie, vampire attack drill, because it struck me that defending your home against all these things is essentially similar. M thinks I'm crazy and barricaded himself in his room with his cel phone, where I heard him explaining the madness of his mother. He'll thank me when the zombies come, no doubt. I shouted this through his bedroom door, but I don't think it helped. He didn't want to participate in the anti-bird/zombie drill. The fool.

We will have to use A’s room, because the basement is too scary and depressing in the best of times, and if you were down there because of a zombie or bird or vampire attack, well, you would quickly become suicidal and let them in. Probably take about 5 minutes. So, A’s room. It only has 2 windows and one exterior wall, so it’s the easiest to defend. There’s plywood by the front of the house (being white trash is so handy sometimes!) and we could quickly nail that up over the windows. Jackson, Theo and Barbieri have been mobilized to watch for suspicious bird actions. We can pile up quilts and stuffed animals against the interior walls, and drag the badminton racquets and baseball bats in from the shed. There’s canned beans and a bottle of Key Lime juice in the pantry, easily transportable across the hall to A’s room. We can live on that indefinitely, no doubt.

We’re ready.