Who Are These People?

Have your parents ever taken up some ridiculous hobby and go so overboard with it that at some point you find yourself saying "What the fuck is going on here, who are these people?

My parents are currently heavily into birds. I'm not sure exactly how this happened. For years we've had a modest bird feeder in the back corner of our backyard, and just over the last month bird feeders have been springing up in the yard like high priced condos.

We used to talk about normal things at dinner like how I should move the fuck out of their house before they strangle themselves. Now they say things like: "You should have seen this blue speckled finch that was eating out of the Opus 8302 Berkshire feeder today." and all I can do is shake my head and say, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Sometimes I'll wake up in the morning and I'll see my Dad in the kitchen with a pair of binoculars, reading from his bird manual. and I'll say, "Hey Dad how's it going" and he'll be like "shhhhhhhhhhhhh.." be quiet, do you see the male cardinal feeding on those white millet seeds, I just put out there.

And I'm like, "yeah I do see it Dad, do you realize that you are in the house looking at birds through fucking binoculars?"

Now because there are so many bird feeders in my backyard, squirrels too have started to come in droves to the "bird feeder district" of the yard. But my dad was having none of that because the squirrels were scaling up the poles of the feeders, scaring away all the birds and eating all the seeds.

To remedy this problem, he smeared vaseline on the poles of all the bird feeders. Sometimes I'll be walking through the kitchen and I'll see all these squirrels trying to climb the pole, but they get about halfway up and then slide right back down because of the vaseline.

And you probably think thats weird. And it is. But so is this.

Whenever my Mom sees squirrels, she runs outside with a louisville slugger bat that she always keeps next to the door, and chases them out of the backyard.

So Yeah. These are the people responsible for my birth.