The Squirrely Bird Always Gets the Worm

I believe we all have that one screwy neighbor…you know the one I’m talking about.  The soccer mom  who does 5 point turns in her driveway to park her enormous SUV just right; that guy who paces his back yard after digging shallow graves spraying insect killer sporadically in the air and creating his own exterminator version of Swan Lake; the old woman who cuts the grass along her stepping stones with craft scissors while humming “Tinny Bubbles” by  Don Ho and who visits only to bring you bagged specimens of dog poo collected from her yard to inquire as to whether or not your dog made it.  Okay well maybe that last one was just an isolated case in which my aunt and uncle were living next door to a lunatic, but you get the point.

Well in my child “hood”, that one neighbor was a doozy.  A hoarder of sorts, she would chase her two rambunctious boys around the junkyard known as her lawn with frying pans or ping pong paddles threatening to beat some sense into them.  When you knocked on her door, she would answer by cracking it just enough to catch a glimpse of her hair net and lazy eye.  But all of that probably would have gone unnoticed amongst the neighborhood cast of characters if it hadn’t been for the fact that she would come and go in her dented, busted –up old truck at least 30 times a day.

Our living room had several windows facing the street, so day and night we would see her leave, then return, then leave, and return.  My dad would yell out, “Look kids!  There goes SQUIRRELY BIRD again!” And we would run into the room to giggle and make up stories about where she was headed THIS time.  I’m not sure where my dad got the nickname “squirrely bird”.  It could possibly be another of his famous coonass terms like fiddly-fartin’ or old as the hills or T-totally ugly.  But at age 10, I pictured the squirrely bird to be something like this.

"Git back here you spawn of the devil!"

And sometimes I would defend the squirrely bird by suggesting “normal” reasons for her comings and goings.  Things like, “She’s probably just getting groceries.” Or “Maybe she’s secretly a superhero who has to fight crime.”

Heeeere I come to save the DAAAAAY!

My dad would be like, “Nah, she’s just squirrely.”

My neighborhood now is peppered with squirrely birds.  But at least there aren’t any peepers.