Judy Battles The Birds Nest in Robins’ Hood

Judy bites bird!

You’ve heard the old journalist’s story that when a dog bites a man it’s not news, but when a man bites a dog…well you have a story.

My friend Judy has some pesky robins flying around her house. They are trying to build a nest inside the siding. She wants no part of it and does everything to the birds but bite them.

In fact, she’s has a war raging with the robins when they come back to roost. This goes on every spring. For whatever reason, they love the outside of her home.

You can count on it, as the first sign of spring, the robins start circling her house looking for a place to build their hood. They are very creative and never build it in the same spot. Of course she won’t let them. They have found spots she didn’t even know existed.

Animals, and I guess birds, have a sense of who does not like them. And they gravitate to those people. We have had several cat haters come to our house. Well, those are the people the cats run up to. My mom and her sister used to squeal like a little kids when they saw our four-legged kids, and the cats couldn’t wait to jump up on their laps.

I think these robins are smarter than a fifth grader. They know my friend hates them and they must have meetings during the winter to plot against her. She’s number one on their list in the Creve Coeur area I’m sure.

These birds are resourceful and will use anything to reinforce their home. Straw, paper, sticks whatever.  One time they found a piece of foil and they really had a glitzy house. That would be fun, I would like that.

The birds have to work fast because their babies don’t take nine months to hatch. It’s more a matter of weeks. Their home needs to be big enough to house mom, sometimes dad, and little babies. And those little babies grow fast and outgrow the nest in about 14 days.

Meanwhile the area around the nest gets extremely dirty. Lots of straw, grass, sticks and who knows what. My friend has to clean up after these messy teenagers. It’s a dirty subject but I must mention the poop which gets out of hand or should I say rear. It’s a mess and really hard to clean up.

Now my friend and I both have pet birds. We put special paper in the bottom of the cage to hold their matter. I wonder if she could get large sheets of this paper and line the walkway or her front porch or garage with it so at least she could change the paper daily.

I think I need to design some kind of paper to put around the outside of a house that will catch bird poop. I wonder if I could get on Shark Tank with that? Who among us have not had to clean up bird poop at one time or other?

Meanwhile my friend has to be more creative than the birds to block their latest nest. She has to be one step ahead of them to discourage them from wrecking bird havoc.

She has put bricks around the area, sticks, stones, and, this year, she really got sneaky when she put a gumball right in the middle of the area. If the birds try to sit down they would get an ouch on their rear. She is getting downright nasty.

The other thing that kind of makes me sick is watching mom and dad robin searching in your yard for worms. I’m not a fan of things slimy.  If you’ve ever seen a bird with a worm in his mouth flying up and feeding it to his baby, it is almost more than my stomach can take, especially early in the morning before my coffee.

I think if we ever get anybody building a nest on our front porch I’ll go to the bait shop and just buy some worms, stick them out in the yard, and make their job easier for them. By the way I love all the birds. Unlike my friend, I don’t care if they have homes on the porch or anywhere around our house.

One spring we had a bird building a nest in the tree right outside my living room window. I watched eagerly every day. When the birds hatched, I was almost as excited as when my cat gave birth to kittens. Being a city girl I’m not used all this nature.

I was actually sad when the birds flew the coop, and often wondered why our kids can’t “fly the coop” sooner. It would be a lot less expensive and less aggravating.

One day I even got the grandkids to watch the birds. That’s when they used to come over to Grandma’s and think everything over here was interesting. Now they don’t want to visit at all. I guess they think we’re just boring old people. They have no idea what they’re missing.

I eagerly await to hear the outcome of the latest saga with my friend and the robin’s. I secretly hope that they come out ahead like they do most years. So then I can call my story, “How Robin is Getting the Best of People”.

Meantime, Judy is trying to stop the nest building by hanging or leaning every rake, shovel and stick she can find to keep them away. I think she’s even giving them ideas of where they can go.

I decided to ask Google, who knows more about everything then everybody, how to keep birds away from nesting on your property.

There must be a lot of people out there with this problem because we could spend all day reading about what to buy and where to go. I was impressed with the wide array of products you can buy to deter the little darlings.

I sent the Google findings to my friend in hopes she will use one of these before a neighbor calls the “men in the white coats” to come and get her after they see everything that she’s leaning, propping, and putting out around her property. I’m sure they must think that she’s a little daft in the head by now.

Stay tuned to see who won the battle, the birds or Judy.