There is a giant blue jay who comes to my porch, and he is destined to be my friend, I swear it.
The problem is, he’s too damn smart: this bird has knees. (Husband and I maintain that little birds don’t have knees, but bigger ones do, and it directly correlates to brain size.) The little birds, the chickadees and sparrows, they’re kneeless, so they’re dumb as rocks. They fly right up to the feeder when I’m barely a foot away. They don’t see gigantic, 5’4″ me as a threat unless I move. (I mean, I’m not a threat, but they have literal bird brains, so clearly I am one.) But the fucking blue jay only comes around when I’m inside. How am I supposed to get him to sit on my shoulder and be the ominous corvid to my suburban witch if he won’t even exist in the same space as me?
And the squirrels are no help. These fuzzy, tree-rat bastards are just making an absolute wreck of my bird feeder. I don’t begrudge them eating nuts and seeds that are seemingly endless, fresh, and so damn easy to access, but my gods does their avarice know no bounds! It’s official, I have become one of those women who’s at war with the local fauna over trying to feed other local fauna, and I guess it was inevitable, but the thing is that the caricature of a middle-aged person shaking their fist and running across the house because they’ve spotting some upside-down, beady-eyed, fluffy-tailed fuck spilling out a newly filled feeder is just so damn accurate. And for the record, I like squirrels. I like rats too! And don’t even get me started on how much I love chipmunks! Can’t we just come to an agreement on how much is appropriate to hoard?
But back to the birds. The first time I saw this blue jay, my heart just fluttered in that something-clandestine-is-happening way. I assume it’s always the same blue jay because, well, there’s only the one at any time, and he’s a massive fucker, so he’s probably like the highlander of the jays, the mob boss of the non-raptors, the carrion kahuna. (Don’t try to correct me on how many blue jays can inhabit an area, this one is special, and he will be mine.) It would be great if he would bring me shiny things in trade for food, like crows sometimes do for other lucky souls, but if we could just hang out at the same time on the porch, I would take that.
I saw him on the porch last night while I was inside, and I think he saw me. I waved to him, and he jumped down from the railing and hopped a tiny bit toward the window. Perhaps this was the beginning of something. Or he saw his reflection.
I’ve run out of bird seed on account of the squirrels, so I’ve taken to tearing up stale bread and placing it across the porch railing, doing so with a flourish and speaking into the trees to come, to eat, to accept these gifts and accept me as one of their own. This morning as I did so, not a single winged fuck fluttered over to even say hello. Languidly I tossed some pieces to a little gathering of wrens who were chirping up from under a bush on the ground below. Four pieces I tossed to them, and they all fought over the same one. Kneeless dolts.
When will my sharp-brained jay grace me with his presence? For how long must I suffer, a corvid-less witch in a forest full of tits? What must I do to be worthy?
A.K. Caggiano 