Crows are Creepy

My house looks like the haunted house on the block. We rent and our dear landlord is not much for investing in the place. In our front yard we have two massive pine trees, a cracked driveway (from the pine trees), and no grass because I can't grow anything.

Yesterday we started our homeschool day when this strange noise started. Soon the noise became so loud the kids couldn't concentrate. I went outside to see large black birds squawking and incessantly repositioning themselves all over the tops of our trees. A murder of crows had shown up. (In case you didn't know a group of crows is called a "murder" not a "flock" creepy...) I don't know if it was Hitchcock's "The Birds," or all the Stephen King movies I watched as a teenager, or the fact that Halloween is just around the corner, but as I watched them all of the sudden the house felt creepy.

I went back inside the house to find both kids highly agitated. I sent them to the back bedroom with the door closed and turned a fan on for white noise. They could still hear the birds and refused to do any schoolwork with all the squawking.

So I left them in the bedroom and went to the front door to scare the crows away. My hand was on the doorknob when I thought... what if they attack me? I've never seen crows in my front yard before, what if they're rabid? What if a flock of crows is called a murder for a reason? What if Stephen King has had close encounters w/ a murder and that inspired his writing???

Do you ever have those times when you know you're suppose to act like an adult, but you really don't want to? I stood there reminding myself, that Hitchcock's work is fiction, King's work is fiction, I've never read in the newspaper about anyone dying from a crow attack... The over the din I hear G screaming, "I can't take it anymore!"

Drat! The choice is clear, face a meltdown or possible death by birds. I turned the doorknob, went outside, and yelled at the birds. They did nothing. I threw a pine cone, stomped my feet, waved my hands, and the wretched crows three stories up didn't even look at me. Creepy, rude, obnoxious crows, they ought to be called a nuisance... With a meltdown quickly approaching, there was only one thing left to do. I called my friend and escaped to her house.