A Ninja Songbird is after me.

Somebody has contracted a Ninja Songbird to take me out.

A little background......

I'm lying in bed during the day (I often work nights) trying to sleep but being kept awake by a faint but near-constant, rhythmic "phock.....phock....phock....."

I'm morbidly sure that this is a catastrophically expensive plumbing leak somewhere, and I keep getting up to go into the bathroom and kitchen nook to search for it. Nothing under the sinks, no drips in the shower, no pools of water in evidence. Of course, every time I get up, I stand there motionless in my jammies for fifteen minutes listening to pristine silence. Back to bed. "Phock.........phock.....phock........"

This goes on for a few days, until I am ready to lose it. Then I go downstairs into the basement to look around. There's no plumbing down there that I'm aware of. While I'm down there, I happen to notice an LBB (Little Brown Bird) flinging itself against the window. "Phock...." Ah ha.

The back deck is entirely enclosed in chicken wire- a cat playground that the cats decided they didn't care for, so I haven't bothered to remove the insulating plastic from the doors for a couple of years. Okay, so the vines have forced a hole(s) in the chicken wire and the wildlife is getting in.

For the next few days..... "Phock....phock....phock....." Every time I go downstairs to peek, that bird is clinging to the wire opposite the dark window. Every few minutes, it flings itself against the glass.

Okay, so it found a little hole somewhere and squeezed in, and now it's trapped.

Unfortunately, with the door closed off and the entire thing choked with vines, there is no simple way to open the enclosed porch up in order to release the bird or admit a kitsune with a net. Just getting down the slope to have a look around from the outside is an expedition.

I confess I left the matter for a few days, hoping that the bird would find its own way out. It's not like it's going to starve (hell, the termites alone would feed a battalion of LBB's).

Several days later, it's still phocking around out there, so I reluctantly put on my galoshes and armed myself with a pair of wire cutters and crept down the slope.

No LBB. There's a bird OUTSIDE the enclosure, singing in a tree.

I go back inside, downstairs, and look out the window. There it is, on the wire. "Phock......phock....phock....."

Back outside and down the slope. Crawl all around the enclosure. No bird inside. No discernable hole.

This time, I stood motionless at the corner of the deck for about 15 min, until that LBB In the tree flew into the vines and- a moment later- re-emerged inside the enclosure.

"Phock....phock....phock....."

So it can get out anytime it wants- only it usually doesn't WANT because it is spending all of its time flinging itself against a dark window. I have also seen an LBB (now surmised to be the same suspect) battering itself against the upstairs window 1 story above this one on a few occasions this week.

The only conclusion I can draw is that it's after me.

WTF???????!!?? Seriously, what is it doing and why? I don't get it.