I swear this actually happened.
Monday 6/4 – Went out to the car at lunch and found it covered in a swarm of bees. None of the neighboring cars had bees on them.
Tuesday, 6/5 – 3:00 Soda break at the Silo Bookstore. Walking back to my building with a berry-Dr. Pepper in hand, a duck flew into my head. Yes, I was struck by waterfowl. A mallard swooped in from behind and to the right and whacked me in the temple with his wing. He then landed alongside another mallard who had managed to avoid me and began to quack. I looked around desperately for spectators. None to be found.
Wednesday, 6/6 – Walking to the car after work and a crow was following me and screaming at me. Every time I'd get away a little, he would fly to the tree or building directly overhead and continue squawking at me. Followed me for about 2 blocks, which is the entire distance from my building to my car.
Thursday, 6/7 – Crow was waiting for me in the morning, and followed me back to the building. Terrific, he knows where I live. Now I know crows are smart as hell*, but this one is about to get blasted.
Friday, 6/8 – No remarkable encounters with anything flying. Best day this week.
Saturday, 6/9 – Went to the air show at Mather field. A Thunderbirds solo pilot experienced a 'birdstrike' and had to land. Yeah, we killed the bird, but it damaged a $15 million plane and sunburned 70,000 people. But man, we killed that bird.
Week of 6/10 – Crow follows me to or from the car several times this week. A passing cyclist informs me that the crow is scolding me. Who the fuck asked that guy?
Wednesday, 6/20 – The crow is after me again. This time I hid behind some trees until there was nobody around and then lobbed a few small rocks at it. My ability to throw straight up in the air shames me. Try it sometime, your body gets in the way.
Thursday, 6/21 – Walking around downtown Davis and a bee lands on my shoulder and will not go away. This isn't something that would be worth mentioning at all if it wasn't part of the ongoing chain of 'airborne critters harassing me' events. After 2 minutes of walking around and flapping at it, drastic measures were taken to get rid of the bee. Success, but at the cost of minor loss of clothing. I was getting tired of this shit happening so I squished the bee when it came out. Take that, nature.
Later Thursday, 6/21 – Riding along the American River Bike Trail, where there are tremendous swarms of bugs around dusk. I've never figured out what a swarm of bugs like that does except for get hit by bikers. There were several of those little flippy darty birds flipping and darting around after the bugs, and one such bird darted in front of me and hit me in the armpit. At 20 mph, I sort of hit him too. Dragged it along for a half-second before he got away. Further down the road, as I was wondering what all this meant, I nearly ran over a quail that was walking across the path.
After the first couple of these things I was figuring it was just weird, but now I'm starting to consider my options. They seem to all revolve around building an ark, carrying an attack-rodent, growing gills and living underwater, or generating some sort of force-field powered by crystals and diesel gasoline. Anyway, I'm open to suggestion.
*Crows can use tools. Davis contains a few groves of walnut trees and a huge flock of hungry crows. During the walnut season the crows want to eat the walnuts (no surprise here) but are unable to break the shells. The solution they've devised is to pick up the walnuts and wait for a car to drive by and drop them into the road in front of the car. The car runs over the walnuts, cracks them, and birds feast. The first time I saw it I couldn't believe it, there were actually birds dropping what appeared to be bouncy balls on the road in front of me. Evidently, the crows are unable to distinguish between cars and bicycles, which has resulted in more than one cyclist being pelted with walnuts from above.
For the skeptics who are saying "that's not really using tools"……check this out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZnsO2ZgWo
BAM!
