Birds!

I am an environmentalist who agonizes over the paper v. plastic decision and a vegetarian who finds it not altogether impossible that fish can feel (not as in having emotions, but as in pain). However, for some strange reason the woodling creatures have it out for me.

My childhood home, as most of you know, is somewhat rural and sits pretty near several acres of wooded area. In seventh grade I moved into the basement. Not long after the move, I began to be attacked by birds. No joke. On several occasions they came flying at me out of the closet and my father had to bring them to an untimely end (sorry, Ben). Once I awoke around 5:30am and heard one flapping around in the dark and screamed for over an hour until someone came down to help me. Of course, somehow the little bastard escaped and I'm the one who looked like a loony bird. My dad eventually figured out they were coming in through the chimney opening, and we duct taped the downstairs hole to prevent future attacks. (These things have proper names, but I don't know them, so just use your imagination if it's difficult to understand.)

Things were fine for a few years until a spider decided it wanted to snuggle up to me on my pillow one night. I didn't sleep in my room for months. When cleaning out for the return, we caught a grandaddy longlegs red-handed as he scurried up my bedskirt - as of that moment my boxsprings would be forever naked for all the world to see because no more bedskirts for me, ever.

Again, things were fine for the rest of high school, and I had no problems until post-college I returned home from England homeless and found myself once again in that old room. Then, the crickets came out to play. I cannot tell you how many nights I would wake up to hear one damn cricket right on the other side of the wall chirp-chirp-chirping. I would get a flashlight (they stop if I turned on the light) and some bug spray and maneuver in my dad's shop until I spotted and eliminated the little critter. Even my sympathetic heart turns cold and murderous when someone/something fucks with my sleep. The crickets were such a problem during the late summer months (really, cricket, singular, because usually it would be just one - and let me tell you it's 4000 times worse than a symphony of crickets because it does not chirp in rhythm, but in a random tempo that will drive any woman to insanity), where was it. Oh yes, they became such an issue that I stayed in a hotel on the night before my LSAT because I was afraid otherwise I wouldn't get any good sleep. (Ok, and also my LSAT was about a half hour away, but still.)

When I moved to Charlottesville, those g.d. crickets followed me - or one cricket whose soul will forever haunt me. But this time it was outside, and not much I could do. This year it didn't really happen as much, and I thought finally nature and I had come to a truce.

Until now.

It seems the birds have a beef with me once again. This I do not understand. I thought that during exams we had made friends and everything was copasetic. However, in the past few weeks between 4:00 and 5:00 am those little fuckers are just sing, sing, singing outside my window. When it's time for me to wake up, around 7:30, not a damn peep. What gives? It's like they are purposely ruining the last couple hours of sleep for me. Because once I wake up and hear their grating little "song" not even a pillow over my ear-plugged ear makes it go away, and you imagine how easy it is to get back to sleep then. I'm at a loss of what to do. Sometimes the problem can be eliminated by sleeping at Jeff's, but when it rains his apartment has its own sleep-deprivation drip-drip-dripping problems; coincidentally, those loudmouthed birds seem to get louder in the rain. If I had a gun I could maybe shoot them, but odds are you can't see the bastards either.

Does anyone know if they make bird repellant?