Swelter

[rejectomorph]

There is an insane woodpecker in the neighborhood. This morning I heard an odd, metallic rattling a couple of times. A short while later, when I was outdoors, I heard it again, and I saw that a woodpecker was standing on top of a mailbox up the street, drilling at it. Did the bird have a beef with the postal service? I don't know, but the drilling continued off and on for several minutes. Finally the woodpecker gave up. I have no idea why it tried to drill into a metal mailbox. Maybe the box was painted with something that smells like woodpecker food, or maybe it was just a crazy woodpecker.

I'm experiencing seasonal whiplash. Going from cool, rainy weather to hot, dry, summery weather in less than a week is not pleasant. The only good thing about this sudden onset of premature summer is that the long-delayed iced tea season is here at last. Unfortunately, the black cherry juice I use as one of the flavorings in my favorite tea concoction has sat on the shelf too long and become bitter. It will have to be replaced. Until then, I am drinking a substandard version of my favorite hot weather beverage. Still, it's a nice change from ordinary hot tea.

The mosquitoes are so numerous now, and I have been bitten so many times, that I expect to contract West Nile Virus momentarily, if I haven't done so already. I'm quite sure that I'll be dead within the week. I'd have a better chance of survival if the stupid woodpeckers would eat mosquitoes instead of mailboxes.

Comments

[gutbloom.livejournal.com]

The woodpecker is trying to get laid. Since he has no way of advertising the relative size of his cloaca... and given that females wouldn't care anyway since they have one too... he shows off by making as MUCH NOISE AS POSSIBLE, which explains why the most annoying cartoon character in the canon is a woodpecker.

[rejectomorph]

So essentially, this is a very clever woodpecker (having discovered that metal makes a lot more noise than wood), but one who is not particularly attractive to females ( or else he would have gotten laid before being driven to the extreme measure of pounding his beak on a piece of steel.) Sounds to me like the old story of the brainy geek being ignored by the hot babes, and then making a spectacle of himself to get their attention. If, a few years hence, there are a lot of woodpeckers hammering at mailboxes, we'll know he was successful. I'm not expecting it to work out for him, though. Natural selection is harsh.