Saturday, June 17, 2006

Operation: Shock & Caw!

I told you it was on and, oh, is it ON!

Pretty much the entire day was spent initiating the rollout of "Operation: Shock & Caw," phase one of a multi-pronged offensive focused on the elimination of our avian adversary -- Woody Woodfucker.

A quick trip to the local Ace Hardware (which apparently, "is the place") netted the necessary provisions to begin the rollout. Fishing line -- check! Aluminum foil -- check! Spray insulation -- check! New hose -- fuck! I should mention that we were forced to buy a new hose because the old one EXPLODED BECAUSE OF THAT FUCKING WOODPECKER! See, that flying turd woke me up at 5:30 today with its "tap-tap-tapping" and I ran outside and blasted that dick with the hose. Then I hid behind the tree (yeah, you heard me) for about 15 minutes and blasted it about four more times as it tried to return to the scene of the peck. Convinced it was gone, I left the hose on, just in case I had to run out again for another round of a-blastin'. Well, I guess when you leave a shitty hose on for a really long time and have a closed spray head on the end of it... um, it tends to explode. Who knew?!

So I had to buy a goddamn new hose. YOU HEAR THAT, WOODY? YOU OWE ME 30 BUCKS, YOU SHITHEAD!

Anyhose, I got all the stuff home and entered the fabrication phase. The old lady and I cut out long strips of foil, about three feet or so, duct-taped the ends, punched holes in said ends, tied them to these o-rings with fishing line, and then strung them to a separate line. It felt very underground -- like we were some rebels, sharpening stakes for some deep-jungle Punji man-trap.

You may well be wondering where Miss O and Mr. Z were during all this. Well, in true Parent-of-the-Year form, we basically sat them in front of the TV and put in this "Best of Fat Albert" video we got from Blockbuster. Look, it was 90 fucking degrees outside, they were driving us batshit and Fat Albert kept them zombie-fied for a good hour or so, so LAY OFF! Besides, they learned the valuable lesson that when Rudy started to smoke cigarettes, he was like school in the summertime... NO CLASS! HEY-HEY-HEY!



Meanwhile, back at the front, I got out the "Bendy Ladder of Death" and propped it up against the afflicted side of the house. I'm not good with heights, and I have this Inspector Gadget-type ladder that extends and bends and loop-de-doos, and every time I climb up this fucking thing (and I'm going pretty high up there -- like 1000 feet or so) I'm convinced I'm gonna plummet to the ground and end up eating pudding through a straw for the rest of my life. But my well-being was not important -- I was on a mission!

Blah, blah, blah, I hooked up a horizontal support nexus of fishing line across the side of the house and then attached the "foil agitation devices" to said wire. Mission accomplished!



I have to say, it looked pretty promising. The foil strips were twisting around and scraping against the siding -- if I were a woodpecker, I'd shit my... whatever it is they shit. But we weren't through yet. This is where the old lady stepped in and showed some true moxie. She had the idea to create some wings out of cardboard and attach them (read: duct tape them) to the worthless, piece-of-shit inflatable owl that I knew was a fucking ripoff but bought online anyway because I'm an asshole, that's why. I was dubious of her plan, but indulged her as she put the thing together because, well, because I like to see the old lady work with her hands. It's nice to see her climb out of her ivory tower, now and again, and dabble with us common rabble. It's HOT!

But I digress. After a few minutes of impressive duct-tapery, she came up with this:



AAAAAHHHHHH! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!! MAD OWL ON THE LOOSE!!!!!! It was mighty impressive. I want to hide out and get a video of the first bird to fly by that thing and watch as its tiny birdy heart literally explodes out of its body cavity. A single tear of joy will wend its way down my flush-ed cheek.

So, everthing was in place, I had lost about 20 pounds through sweat-loss and we decided to call it a day. I even had time to pop over to the Y and get a little victory swimming in as a small reward.

When I got back, however, all was not well on the eastern front. Apparently, the "foil agitation devices" were agitating so vigorously that they had become entangled in the horizontal support nexus. In other words, the foil got all shizzy-nizzy.

We went back to the war room and came up with a new plan to extend the overall length of the "foil agitation devices" by a couple of feet and added a stabilizing anchor (more duct tape) to the ends to decrease over floppage of the foil.

Then it was back up the "Bendy Ladder of Death" to attach the new devices/stabilizers. Here is the final result:



And that's where we stand now, at, time check... 2300 hours.

Now we wait.

Bring it, Woodfucker.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pop would be so proud. And no firearms were needed...yet.
--Seester

Kim said...

My dad used to shoot, as well as throw firecrackers, at the freakin' ANNOYING blue jays that would squawk endlessly outside our windows. It worked for awhile, but they always came back. Good times!

Happy Father's Day!!