Partial Victory

I don't want to go so far as to declare victory on the War on Birds, but there was no hosing down needed today. So maybe I'll just say that I'm in the lead of this little battle.

The goop was gross. And extremely sticky. Not super glue, just really gooey sticky. Imagine a gooey sticky vaseline - that's what I was dealing with. There are warning labels all over the tube about it being hazardous, so I wore gloves. I tried to spread the goop out, but it immediately stuck to the gloves and then the fingers of the gloves immediately stuck to each other. I got some on the top of the light but had to wait until later to apply it to the top of the door because it was supposed to be dried. I went to check several hours later, and looking out the window and the light, I could see feathers stuck on the light. The feathers were at such an angle and were multiple colors that I thought it was an entire leg. The goop warns of this and it would be just my luck to have amputated a bird. I finally dared myself to take a closer look (I'm a wimp. Ask me about my mice story sometime.) and discovered that it was only a few feathers. Of course, in the process of taking a closer look, I actually had to go out on the porch and when I peeked out of the front door, sure enough, birds on top of the doorway. I had to shoo them away (with a broom of course with me standing inside the house - I wasn't about to get that close). It was finally time to goop up the door. It didn't stick very well, but I managed to get a bunch on. I did the glove thing again thinking that the fingers might not stick together this time. Not sure why it would be different the second time. Anyhow, I went back in and then re-read for the 20th time the instructions. There were a lot of details regarding the thickness of the bead to lay down, which varied by bird. Swallows were 1/8 inch. And the instructions specifically yelled DO NOT apply more than the specified width (birds could get stuck). The problem was that the opening of the tube was at least 1/2 inch thick. So I got all panicky that I was going to have stuck birds so I went out with a popsicle stick and spread it out, which by the way, worked so much better than the gloves. And then off to bed.

I was more than a little nervous waking up this morning. I had managed to convince myself that I had applied way too much goop and that my doorway would be covered with dead birds, now stuck in the goop. I was very relieved to discover this was not the case when I took the dogs out. However, the true test lay ahead and what would happen throughout the day since the birds don't actually do anything at night.

Big sigh of relief when I got home to discover that there was nothing above the door except the sparkly ribbon and the goop. No nest materials. No feathers. Nothing. Current score: me 1, birds 0.