And by “they,” I mean, of course, “my husband.” My normally
quite rational, logical husband, who refuses to look at the evidence and
surmise, as I have, that there are chupacabras living in our backyard.
Or, if not chupacabraS, then at least *a* chupacabra.
I first learned the monsters lived in our backyard about a
year ago, which I wrote about here.
Since my discovery, I’ve had to make some changes in my
life. I have learned that if I only venture into the backyard during daylight
hours, when the beasties are asleep or hiding, I can pretend that we live in a
relatively safe urban environment (the helicopters hovering overhead
notwithstanding).
You know—it ain’t just a river in Egypt, and all that.
But yesterday afternoon, my blissful bubble of denial was
popped.
I stepped out onto the sunny back stoop, heading to the
garage to do laundry. And I immediately noticed that something weird had
appeared in our backyard overnight.
It was an almost-perfect circle of white and gray seagull
feathers.
And not just a few feathers. A WHOLE BIRD’S worth of
feathers. In a one-foot-diameter circle in the middle of our backyard.
I knew this was not good news. I knew that there was not some
naked and embarrassed seagull shivering in a tree somewhere regretting the last
night’s drunken avian adventures.
And I knew that there must be more than just feathers in
that circle, and that I was just too far away to see what. I was going to have
to assess the damage and decide how to clean it up.
So, imagine my surprise when I reached the circle of
feathers and found…just feathers.
No corpse. No skeleton. No guts. Nothing. Just feathers.
 |
| Obviously. |
more…leftovers, right?
Of course, you’re probably thinking of the more usual urban
predators. I thought that too. I thought, despite the weird circle pattern and
the lack of bones and such, that maybe a cat or a hawk had just chosen our
backyard to feast.
But then I remembered the bird feeder.
A few months ago, I bought a simple, plastic, tube-shaped
bird feeder and hung it with twine from a tree in our backyard. My boys and I
enjoyed watching the birds it attracted along with the neighborhood squirrels,
who couldn’t quite work out how to climb down the twine and get at the
birdseed. “What a good mom I am,” I thought more than once. “Look at me
providing this educational experience for my children.”
Little did I know that I was actually putting their precious
lives in danger by attracting a dangerous mythical creature to our backyard.
Because, one day, the bird feeder fell out of the tree.
At the time, I was pretty sure the a-hole squirrels chewed
through the twine. Makes sense, right? My husband picked it up and put it on
our back stoop, figuring we’d re-hang it the next day.
But the next day? The next day, we found the bird feeder in
the middle of the yard. Something had dragged it off the stoop and had feasted
on the remaining birdseed.
My poor, naïve husband blamed the squirrels again. I, on the
other hand, wasn’t so sure. I mean, how strong ARE these squirrels? Are they
working together? Have they evolved to the point where they have started to use
tools?
No. Of course not. Clearly, the chupacabra was back. But,
because I am a good wife I smiled and nodded at my delusional husband and
placed the bird feeder on top of the water heater, whose top stands about 5
feet off the ground. I still thought I’d fill it up and re-hang it.
Yeah, right.
Because the next day??? The next
day, the birdfeeder was back in the middle of the yard. SOMETHING had climbed
the smooth-sided aluminum box that houses our water heater, grabbed the
birdfeeder, dragged it out to the yard, licked it clean and then—adding insult
to injury—chewed a big hole in it, rendering it useless.
I threw the dumb birdfeeder
away, thinking optimistically that at least the chupacabra would leave us alone
now that there was no food left in our backyard.
Which brings us back to
yesterday and the circle of feathers.
And the fact that I am currently
accepting any and all suggestions for chupacabra extermination.
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