Morning Has Broken...

I nearly committed murder this morning. I was woken before six o'clock, not by the thunderstorm sweeping across my part of the world, but by this bastard bird which kept cheeping out a monotonous - and very irritating - single note. There was no variation, no song, just a single note, repeated at two second intervals for three-quarters of an hour. Clearly, every other bird hated him as much as me, because none of them replied. But that didn't deter him. Oh no. The little bastard just kept right on doing it!

To say that I was annoyed would be an understatement. Normally, if I wake up before six in the morning, I just look at the clock, think to myself that there's at least another hour to go before I'm even going to think about getting up, turn over and go back to sleep. But this morning, I couldn't. That bloody cheeping got under my skin and inside my skull - like a car alarm going off, you can't concentrate on anything other than the noise until it stops. And how I longed for it to stop - I lay there in bed imagining the feathery little bastard being torn asunder by a cat, or having its scrawny neck rung by me. It still wouldn't stop. By just after six, I was on the verge of madness. Deciding that drastic action was needed, I loaded my air rifle and wandered out into the back garden to see if I could get the airborne shitting machine in my sights. Now, I should make clear here that when I say air rifle, what I'm actually talking about is a Daisy BB rifle shaped like a Winchester, of many years vintage. The chances of hitting anything smaller than a tin can at a range greater than the length of my (very small) garden, are minimal - which gives you some idea of my desperation.

So there I was, just after six, during a break in the rain, standing, pyjama-clad, in my back garden, brandishing what, to any casual observer, would appear to be a cowboy rifle. Failing to actually see my feathered tormenter anywhere, I desperately loosed off a couple of shots in the general direction of his 'singing'. Whilst I don't think that I actually hit anything (certainly there haven't been any local press reports of mad sniper attacks in my area today), the noise must have scared him off as the cheeping abruptly stopped. With a feeling of relief, I was able to hang up my gun and return to bed! However, the whole incident has had a knock on effect - thanks to the sleep I lost, I've been irritable all day and now feel exhausted. It is all that bloody bird's fault! I really don't know why anybody encourages the damn things. From now on, its war. If I see any bird tables round here, I'm going to burn them down under cover of darkness. It is also clear that the local cats need to start doing their jobs properly - I want to see more half-dismembered bird corpses littering the gardens on my street! Deterrent - that is the only thing which the little bastards will understand!