The Children Of The Damned bird is back.
Frequent readers might recall him from the spring of 2008, when he announced his presence one morning with a slow, rhythmic rapping on a downstairs window. Tap, tap, tap.
Thats odd, I thought, and put him out of my mind - until the next morning when he appeared again, just after sunrise, perched on the sill. Tap, tap, tap.
I inched close to check him'out: standard-issue robin, no visible scars or tattoos. "What do you want?" I asked, but he didn't answer, didn't even budge when I pressed my nose right up against the pane. Kind of unsettling.
The next morning he was back again, a slow, insistent, crack-of-dawn metronome - tap, tap, tap - and I started to worry. "Look here, if its birdseed you're after, you're out of luck. Go away." He ignored me.
"Creeps me out," said my daughter, shuddering.
This went on for a couple of weeks, the robin rapping, me yelling at him, he paying me no mind. I began timing my morning departure so as to avoid him, just in case he was waiting in ambush with sharpened talons, or a gun or bat.
Not that he was overtly threatening. Indeed, it was his blank, unblinking lack of emotion that sent chills down my spine. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence Of The Worms. "Good evening, Clarice."
And then, as suddenly as he came, he was gone - poof - like Mel Gibsons career.
In time the episode faded, an unwanted memory like parachute pants or the Bill LaForge-era Canucks. Life returned to normal. Until the other morning, just after dawn.
Thump.
It was coming from downstairs.
Thump, thump, thump.
A bird was throwing itself against the same window. It looked familiar.
"Go outside and see what it wants," I told my daughter. Her eyes narrowed:
"You go." Wise child.
I edged closer to the window, checked out the bird: A robin. Same one? Hard to tell with it wearing that Friday The 13th hockey mask, but I think so.
Thump, thump, thump. This has gone on for two weeks. Each morning, the robin is back, hurling itself against the glass like a bar room drunk spoiling for a fight. Im afraid he wants a piece of me.
I called bird expert Ann Nightingale (yes, thats her real name) for confirmation, and she agreed: "I think hes after you."
Really?
No.
My robin, she says, is attacking its reflection. I can save my sanity and keep him safe by soaping the lower portion of the window, or covering it with paper.
The thing to remember about birds, she says, is they come back to breed in the same place each year. "It's their yard, too." You can help them out by providing cover - sheltering plants - and putting the pesticides away. (The caterpillars youre poisoning are a bird's breakfast.) They appreciate water, too, though it has to be clean; better to have no water source at all than a dirty bowl or fountain. Hummingbird feeders should have one part sugar to four parts water.
Nightingale keeps her cats inside, or in enclosures where they cant get at birds. If you do let your cat outside, don't do so until two hours after sunrise and bring it in two hours before sunset - and don't do those things that attract birds to your yard. At this time of year, if a cat kills a bird, the chicks in the nest will starve to death.
Heaven knows birds are dying fast enough. Last June, a report documented a troubling drop in bird populations across Canada. Grassland birds, migratory shorebirds and birds that catch insects in flight have all declined, on average, more than 40 per cent since the 1970s. Even barn swallows are now on the threatened list.
It seems the only thing scarier than a spooky robin rapping at your window is the thought of no robins at all.
