How Many is a Bunch?

I've hated this bird more than I've hated anything else in the world

Some monster of a bird

“How many is a bunch?” She asked as they walked by.

“A bunch of what?” He replied, as if that mattered.

“A bunch of anything.”

“Seven. I think it’s seven.” He turned and smiled, obviously guessing.

She opened her mouth to offer what I can only presume was the correct number of a bunch, and that rotten bird screamed from its window across the street, again.

“SQUAWK!”

That bird ruined my life. I had it all, once. A wife, a dog. A bright red Vespa scooter that I rode to a job I loved. We managed to save enough to buy a too-small house in a too-expensive part of town, and life was good. Better than good.

It wasn’t long after we moved in when that old lady first opened her window, and that bird started screaming at every little thing it saw from its little thing window across the street.

Cars driving by? “Squawk!”

Dogs walking proudly? “SQUAWK!”

My other neighbor scream-swearing at his computer at three in the morning because he won’t learn how to actually use a computer? “SQUAWK, SQUAAAAWK!”

An old-looking squirrel took to sitting in the tree just to the side of the window. It squawked at the squirrel, squawked at his nuts. It squawked at the mailman, at the rain, at the sunshine itself. It squawked when someone backed into my neighbor’s car and sped off into the night. That one was okay, I supposed. Not that it helped; we all just kept trying to ignore that bird, and no one noticed the damage until the morning. Then, again, it squawked.

One morning, a hungry falcon bounced off the screen on that bird’s window. The bird squawked at that for thirty minutes. That falcon could have been my hero.

My wife and I watched the entire box set of “Friends” with that bird.

“Can’t you do something?” She hoped.

“How YOU doin’?” Joey responded.

“Squawk!”

The only time I ever saw the old lady, she was already hobbling towards me with a big antique smile, “Oh, puppies just love me!”

“Please don’t pet him.” I tried. He nipped her almost immediately, and her paper-thin skin bled all the way back into her house. The bird squawked at that too. I wondered how many falcons it would take to finally claw through the screen on that thing’s window.

“Squawk, SQUAWK, SQUAAAAAAAAAWK!”

Probably a bunch.

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