Stuck in Our Heads - Vol. 12 - March 2008

There's a metal gutter just outside my bedroom window. On some sunny mornings when I'm lounging in bed, the sparrows who tend to congregate in my backyard often spend some time raising a holy ruckus by bathing in that gutter. To the uneducated ear, it sounds like someone shaking a coffee can with about forty-five cents in it. My ears, however, have grown to know it for what it is. On the rare occasions when the gutter birds wake me up to a hangover, I generally curse them roundly and then rap sharply on the window in an attempt to scare them off long enough for the antacid, ibuprofen, and Gatorade I bought on the stumble home to work their collective magic.

Not so long ago, I found myself in that very situation, and, as is my custom, I knocked on the window. Far from bringing an end to the noise, my intervention only gave rise to more clatter. Predictably, I ran to the window to see what was the matter. Through some unfortunate confluence of gravity and fate, my storm window had slipped down about three inches, and a sparrow had insinuated itself in to the space between the top half of my storm window and my...uh...calm window. It had fallen to the top of the bottom half of the window (bottom of the top half?) and, without room to spread its wings, was left to flail about, beating its wings ineffectually against the glass, which itself was becoming smeared with various sparrow excretions.

Awesome. Nothing says hangover cure like sunlight, noise, and birdshit.

My first thought was to raise the window so this littlest of God's creatures could ride it back up to the top of the window where it could leave the way it came and go make its noise outside someone else's window. Alas, the little bastard slipped past its lift like a guy who just took your wallet through the closing subway doors. My wits at full strength, I slammed the window shut before the sparrow made a full-blown escape. Now I know why all of those prisons have a double fence. Contingency plans.

So, now it's 730AM, I'm still hungover, and this frantic feathery little shit factory is one thin pane of glass away from begriming my bed.

I flopped back on my pillow and pulled up the covers. "To hell with him," I thought, "I'll just lay here and go to sleep. I help those who help themselves. If he can't ride the Great Train to Freedom, then he can just die right there in my window."

That didn't last too long because this little bird was loud as hell. Besides, I figured if I left it there to die, I would eventually forget about it, and then one day I would be wondering about the smell and then come across the mummified remnants of the little sparrow I turned my back on. So, I started casting about for a non-doubled-fence contingency plan.

That's when my eye lit upon the Miller Lite ice bucket I stole from the Naples, Florida Holiday Inn hotel bar back in the summer of '98. It was after a wedding and before swimming in the hotel pool with my jeans on. It was a short leap from that to using the ice bucket to trap our friend (using the most recent issue of Good Magazine as a lid) and carry him downstairs and out in to the backyard where he belonged.

Since I was up (and, admittedly, a little jangled from the adrenaline of wrestling a two-ounce bird into submission), I set the bucket down and watched the tired little fellow as he gradually came around to the notion that he was no longer trapped. After a few minutes, he lurched up to a low wire and sat there to rest for a long several more minutes, during which he swayed like a drunk on the verge of passing out on the curb while trying to hail a cab. When he didn't fly off or fall dead of exhaustion, I went inside, closed my storm window all the way to the top, and went back to bed. I don't know what happened to the sparrow, but he wasn't there when I went back outside. I'd like to believe he is still one of the ones who raises holy hell in my gutter on sunny weekend mornings, but it's more likely that his weakened state made him an easy target for one of the feral cats that haunts my alley. In either case, I am confident that his time since the Window Imprisonment has been more fitting, if not more fruitful, than it would have been if I hadn't shoved him in to a plastic bucket and taken him back out where he belonged.

There are times like that morning when I feel like the Keeper, making free what is wrongfully restrained. There are other days when I feel like the Sparrow, trapped by my own curiosity and a stifling closeness that is felt but not seen. On days like today, however, I feel like the Window.

You have no idea how hard it is to get birdshit out of the furthest corners of my head.


Title - Artist

Cold Hearted - Paula Abdul
Forever Your Girl - Paula Abdul
All Out of Love - Air Supply
Beauty School Dropout - Frankie Avalon
Old MacDonald
I Want You - Erykah Badu
Ophelia - The Band
When I Paint My Masterpiece - The Band
Believe - The Bravery
My Maria - Brooks & Dunn
John Saw That Number - Neko Case
At the Ceili - Celtic Woman
Saltwater - Chicane
Downtown - Petula Clark
Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen
Send in the Clowns - Judy Collins
Alison - Elvis Costello
Lil Rock Bounce - The Country Boyz
Drive In Drive Out - Dave Matthews Band
Wallflower - Bob Dylan
The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) - Missy Elliot
So Sorry - Feist
The Cool - Lupe Fiasco
Low - Flo Rida
Drunken Lullabies - Flogging Molly
Distant Lover - Marvin Gaye
Thank You for Being a Friend - Golden Girls Theme
Eyes of the World - The Grateful Dead
The Letter - Macy Gray
Ooh Ahh - Grits
These Eyes - The Guess Who
Riding in My Car - Woody Guthrie
Hi-Ya! - Headlights
When the Other Foot Drops, Uncle - Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings
A Whole New World - Brad Kane & Lea Salonga
Drunk Trumpet - Kid Koala
Tossin' and Turnin' - Bobby Lewis
The First Time - Lifehouse
Shadow of the Day - Linkin Park
I'll Walk Alone - Mary Martin
Paper Planes - MIA
Love Me Sexy - Jackie Moon
Fry The Chicken - Ms. Peachez
I'm My Own Grandpa - Willie Nelson
Bye, Bye, Bye - *NSYNC
Jolene - Dolly Parton
Better Man - Pearl Jam
Wildflowers - Tom Petty
Fire - The Pointer Sisters
Keep Me in Mind - The Primitives
Peter and the Wolf - Prokofiev
Round and Round - Ratt
High Noon - Tex Ritter
Diablo Rojo - Rodigo y Gabriela
You're a Wolf - Sea Wolf
Still the Same - Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band
I'm Fucking Matt Damon - Sarah Silverman
Sexual Eruption - Snoop Dogg
Tattoo - Jordin Sparks
Jack Pepsi - Tad
Insistor - Tapes n Tapes
Hooked on a Feeling - B.J. Thomas
Your English is Good - Toyko Police Club
Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood
Beautiful Girls - Van Halen
Cocaine Blues - Townes Van Zandt
Hard Sun - Eddie Vedder
Luka - Suzanne Vega
You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told) - White Stripes
Arleen (John Keane Dance Mix) - Widespread Panic
The Thanks I Get - Wilco
Step By Step - Jesse Winchester
Use Me - Bill Withers
Los Angeles - X