The Bird Tree

A woman lives in the building next door to me.  She's an adorable old hag with a calico cat and a little white dog.  There's a rocking chair on her porch, and she'll sit there for hours in her old lady floral dressing robe while the dog sniffs around the trees on a twenty foot leash. 

Her cat never leaves the window.  He's there right now, I'm sure of it, watching the birds.

She sprinkles birdseed all over the sidewalk beneath the tree in front of her place so its leaves are constantly flickering with twitters and wings.  Like the real kind of twitters, not the annoying kind.  Her cat loves it. 

No one in the hood parks under that tree.  People will park two blocks away before they leave their car under the bird tree.  But sometimes you're in a hurry, or it's cold outside so you assume there won't be that many birds, or you just moved in to the neighborhood and you haven't learned yet.  About the bird tree. 

This week it was cold.

On Monday it was below thirty degrees, which means scarves and fuck yeah weather and soup.  I've been thinking soup-related thoughts all damn week, and mostly about a giant bowl of steaming ramen filled with bamboo shoots and eggs and shit while David Cassidy belts out awesome things in the background about a love there is no cure for. 

I was on my lunch break on the hunt for soup, fantasizing and romanticizing ramen like it's my job (it's not, unfortunately) when paused at a corner was a bent old man wearing the same scarf as me.

I turned and looked at him.  "Nice scarf."

He nodded and smiled.  "Yours is nice as well.  It matches your eyes." He spoke with a thick Irish accent.

"It also matches your accent.  Are you from Ireland?"

"Yes, miss.  But you are not.  I believe your scarf is."

"Yeah, I got it a few summers ago in the Ring of Kerry."

"Which is where I was born.  I'twas lovely to make your acquaintance."

"And you.  Stay warm."

"Stew for lunch!" He smiled.

(You now, stew is also a very delicious kind of soup.) 

My car was parked under the bird tree all day on Monday, where I assumed it would be safe.  The hag never spreads birdseed in the cold.  But the bitch did.  She scattered seeds all over the ground beneath the tree and the sidewalk so her cat could enjoy the birds all day, and the birds ate the seeds (which is not nearly as fulfilling as soup/ramen/stew in this kid of weather) and then the birds SHAT ALL OVER MY CAR.

I haven't had time to clean it until today, so I spent no less than thirty-five minutes scrubbing it this afternoon.

There must be a way to bill the old lady for all the quarters I blew at the car wash. 

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