Tap, Tap, Tapping

This morning I awoke to a muffled sound, almost like a ticking sound. I knew it wasn't my biological clock, because as my niece, Becky, says in North Carolina, that's "done git gone" a LONG time ago! I have excellent hearing, which I'll leave for another day, another chapter. So I'm lying in bed, trying to figure out where the heck this sound is coming from, and what is making this noise. When you live in a trailer, every little noise is magnified.

First I thought it might be water dripping. I jumped up and checked the shower. Nope. Got back in bed. Tick. Tick. Tick. Jumped up and checked the sink - possibly the faucet wasn't turned off all the way. Nope. Dry. Back in bed. Tick. Tick. Maybe it's the wind blowing the blinds in our little 3' x 2' bathroom. Nope. No wind. Crawled back in bed a little frustrated. That incessant ticking was now becoming a pounding in my head. I must have woken Jim up with all my moving around.

"Do you hear that?" I asked him.

"What?"

"That!" I say, as that "tick" comes again.

"I don't hear anything," he replies. (A common scenario in our marriage.)

"There it is again! There! Hear it?"

"Yeah, that's a bird."

"No, it doesn't sound like a bird." Usually when birds walk on our roof we can hear their little claws clicking against the metal. This was a different sound.

"A bird is trying to get into our kitchen slide out."

Then I remembered the other day, right after we parked here. Our trailer is right next to a small tree. The branches touch our kitchen window, in fact. The birds are fascinated by our trailer, and our window, in particular. I've heard that when birds see their reflection they think it's another bird. Right away a robin flew into the tree, then at our window a couple of times.




Now, it seems, this other little bird, which I've yet to identify, has made it it's own personal mission to peck the hell out of our window. Tap, tap, tap. Okay, at first it was cute, kind of funny, you know? I even named him "Nevermore" from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". But as I'm sitting here at the kitchen table, this tapping is beginning to drive me crazy. I mean really, if he thinks that his reflection is another bird, why isn't it fighting back?


I was determined to get a picture of Nevermore so I grabbed my camera and a chair and parked it near the tree. As soon as the bird saw me, he took off. I sat still for a long time, but he didn't come back as long as I was there. The only way I could get a picture of the little guy was through the kitchen window.



I did discover that we had a bird's nest on one of the bars that pushes out our slideout. We've been here less than a week and we've been invaded by birds!

I am a bird lover, but if this tapping goes on for much longer, Nevermore is going to live up to his name.