Got any tips for me?

You know how they say you should never work with animals or children?

Well I’m finding birds are my big sticking point while WFH.

I am being harassed each day by Indian Minor birds and it’s doing my head in.

It’s not the first time issues with feathered creatures have plagued me as a home owner.

In my old house it was bloody bush turkeys that drove me to distraction. We had a 25m x 5m concrete strip along our back fence and a family of bush turkeys decided it was the perfect spot for a nest.

Now that might not have been such a problem in a leafy, rambling backyard, but on concrete it looked like Armageddon as Bush Turkey Dad scratched around our backyard, flipping every bit of dirt and wood chip and leaf mulch he could find out of the garden onto it.

Every day we would sweep it back into the garden and every day he would start piling it on the concrete again.

I would storm around the garden with a Nerf watergun over my shoulder shooting at him and he would disappear for a moment, but as soon as I turned my back, he’d be at it again.

My ex was filled with rage and resentment about both our marriage and the mess, so I was doing the daily restoration of order one day in a desperate attempt to be a better wife.

I bent to flip a bin full of mulch into the garden and ….

ARRRRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHH …

There went my back. Or, more specifically, the ligaments in my pelvis.

My pelvis was already dodgy from The Chicken Incident, which occurred when it started raining one day and I had two baby chickens tweeting around on our back deck. I grabbed one in each hand and dashed inside, then slipped on the wooden floor boards and … splits injury.

Nasty.

In the end, the bush turkeys were one of the major reasons I sold the house. Oh, that and the fact my husband left me.

This time around I want to kill the Indian Minor Birds who sit on my back deck and warble at the top of their lungs all day long, while shitting all over everything.

All those white dots are bird poo. No sooner do I scrub it off than they re-splatter it.

Every now and then they will also try and sneak into the house to steal dog food and pop inside as well.

The dogs are so lazy that they let them do it. It’s only when I yell that they jump to attention and half heartedly chase them out.

Anyways, fortunately I haven’t been injured this time around, but I’m finding it very mentally challenging.

Does someone have a tip on how to get rid of the damn birds?

I have tried putting plastic owls around the place to scare them, and I’ve hung shiny silver things everywhere, but they haven’t worked.

Is there some option other than KILLING THEM?

Song of the day: Nelly Furtado “I’m like a bird”