Recently I’ve been thinking about a painting of a dead bird. Not that I consider a dead bird a particularly attractive subject; I want to kill the bird that has been pooping on my garbage cart handle. Millions of tree branches and it has to roost under my eave over the garbage cart. The inconvience to me is a bitter pill to swallow. Because of the well known avian “runny nose” virus, I’m now afraid to take out the garbage for Tuesday pickup. So now I have to dawdle at the bar every Monday night, pretending to care about football, baseball, etc., until my wife takes out the garbage. You can clearly see this has an economic impact, i.e. the cost of extra drinks.
I could catch the “runny nose” from my wife. Now, whenever we pass in the house, I turn my head away in case she sneezes. She thinks my behavior is peculiar in general so this newest bit doesn’t even register.
I thought about shooting the bird with my air rifle but considered the BB might ricochet off the eave and poke out my eye like Ralphie’s mother worried about in “Christmas Story”. God does sometimes punish those who transgress against his creatures. Like the time I threw the fist sized rock up hill at a rabbit. The rock landed, stopped, slowly started back down the hill, picked up maximum velocity, and then transferred all it’s newly gained energy to my kneecap. This, evidently not being painful enough on its own, knocked me down the hill into a thorn bush.
I then considered the blow gun. Seemingly the ideal weapon for this job, when I looked on line for supplies to make the blow pipe and darts, I found it is a felony to possess blow gun materials in California. What the hell? What kind of a prancing fairie legislator would make such a law? Do they worry some middle school malcontent will dart a room full of classmates, or perhaps someone will conceal the 6′ blow pipe and use it to rob banks. “Give me the money or I’ll dart your fat ass!”
So the bird lives and I’m painting flowers and drinking later on Monday nights.
Bill
On Painting 