CREST HAVEN- Every person has a group of people consisting of family and close friends they can depend on for anything and everything. These people are the ones who are there in the rough times and there for the happy moments, but are also a bunch you can have a great time with and create ever-lasting memories none of you will ever forget.
One such time was two or three years ago, at Christmas time. We’d opened all the presents and now there were about 12 of us in a small living room, and we spent three hours telling great stories, from my uncles’ childhood to past holidays and crazy things we did.
A great time was last week. My mom-mom had called my mother saying she needed her help. There was a bird stuck in her fireplace for the second day, and not only was the constant pecking driving her up the wall, but she was worried about the bird itself.
So, my grandmother being the boss, she sent my mom and I over to her house, and left supplies on the hearth: a flashlight, a pair of heavy-duty gloves, two trash bags, and a good luck note – and then she left for work.
So my mom and I peered through the soot-layered door and our stares were answered by some indignant pecking. That was not a good sign. After a few failed attempts to open the door three inches and get the bird to fly into the doubled-up trash bags, we were stumped.
However, my mother decided to mess around with the doors and managed to scare the bird into the back corner, where he glared timidly at us, squawking when we moved the handles and the bag.
Beginning to lose patience, my mom pulled the door open further and held the bag to the left. The bird, however, was not stupid. He flew right, and landed atop the fan, squawking and flapping his wings. In his sudden movements both my mother and I flipped backwards from our squatting positions to be flat on our backs with no defense against a very upset bird.
We just wanted it to go back outside with his many buddies, but it must have thought we were trying to kidnap it and kill it. So, we are lying on our backs, inching away from the bird, trying to figure out what to do next.
My mom, however, suddenly gets brave, jumps to her feet and swats at the bird. And I laid on the floor, screaming for her to stop because if that bird went after me, it was not going to be pretty.
She threw a glove at it, and it flew up, and dive-bombed me on the floor. I screamed, rolled over, and grabbed my mom onto the floor with me. The bird scooped down at us one last time, and then made a beeline for the open front door. My mom jumped up, slammed it shut, and then fell on the floor in exhaustion and an adrenaline rush. I threw the glove at her head, because not only did she leave me on the floor by myself, but I nearly got attacked by a killer bird we were trying to help.
This kind of thing is quite frequent in our family. My father got dive-bombed by an old bird in our attic which knocked him off the ladder and onto the hallway floor on his back, and my aunt’s store in Cape May gets birds occasionally, who fly into their shiny windows thinking they’re going outside.
So we have a phobia with birds- but it could be worse.
Davis, 16, of Green Creek is a sophomore at the Technical High School.
Stone Harbor – Bob Ross thank you for all your years of volunteer service to the community of Stone Harbor. A Lifelong resident And property owner. 10 years on school board, 6 years on zoning board they can't…
