and if that Knocking-bird don’t sing
“PAAAAAAAAHHHHH-TERRRRRRRRR!”
I rolled over in bed and buried my head under a pile of pillows, unsure of my whereabouts. The stomping that followed signaled the quick-approaching footsteps of my roommate/best-friend/heterosexual-life-partner Lara making her way from her back-of-the-house bedroom, across the kitchen and straight toward my room.
She cracked open my bedroom door. “Potterrrrr?” she whispered.
“Ah-yeah?” I gurgled, mostly not awake.
“Potter, the birds are pecking on my head.” This got my attention enough to prop myself almost-upright in my bed, nearly concerned that she was bringing a halo of wild birds into my room.
“Sorry?” I said, not so much apology as an inquiry.
“The birds are pecking on my head in my room! Potter, you don’t hear the woodpeckers?”
Just like that, we had new houseguests. I refer to them as the Knocking-birds.
Our landlady came over multiple times through the next few weeks, bringing all kinds of anti-Knocking-bird regalia. My sister sat with the electric air mattress pump, blowing up giant beach balls with big bullseyes all the way around. Once they were inflated, we tied iridescent streamers to the bottoms of each of them and went outside with the landlady to hang one up on each corner of the house. Over time, the collection of kitsch hanging from the roof came to include color-changing light-spheres, shiny garlands, blinking Christmas lights and even a motion-sensored owl that turns its head to give the evil eye to anything that crosses its path.
And still, every morning I would hear the cadence of Lara’s feet stamping across the kitchen floor and across to the back porch door to go outside and shout at the Knocking-birds.
At the front desk of the Boulder studio one day, I was laughing and telling a fellow teacher about how Lara had begun to throw leftover Christmas mints at the house to try to scare the Knocking-birds away. A customer with her daughter overheard and said, “Good luck with those woodpeckers.”
She walked up to the desk to purchase a new mat for her daughter (a Manduka, in case you were wondering). “We had a family of woodpeckers at our old house.” Apparently, when Knocking-birds find their nesting place, they will come back year after year. “Animal services took the birds and tried to relocate them far, far away and the next spring… tap tap tap. There they were again.”
Uh-oh, I thought. That’s not good.
Some people know exactly where their heart belongs – and it’s the place that they revisit time and time again.
For others, they’d rather be able to distance themselves from the cyclical visitors in life – bad relationships, old habits, health problems – and have them not come back year after year.
It’s an interesting cycle. You can pack up your problems and try to ship them to the other side of the world. You can hope and pray that they will find a new place to nest and new skies to fly through that are far, far away from the freedom of your own.
You never know when it will come back around. You can’t simply come up with a way to kill a Knocking-bird (it’s illegal; I checked). But where would the Yoga be in that anyway?
We are yogis – we find the balance in situations like this. Find ways to live with it but also ways to fortify the container of our life so that maybe we can become strong enough to finally keep those pests from taking up their residency in our hearts.
Until our house is Knocking-bird-proofed with new siding or stucco or something, our amazing landlady gave Lara the greatest consolation prize.
I received a very loud and excited voicemail from Lara while I was teaching class one evening.
“Paaaaahhhh-terrrrr!!!!!” she sang. “Ohmigosh, POTTER! I came home! And there was a box on the couch! And a note! Ohmigosh, POTTERRRRRR!!! Hurry home and see!”
I obviously had no idea what the heck was going on, but the second I walked in the front door it all became very apparent very quickly.
Lara stood in the kitchen with a giant SuperSoaker perched on her shoulder. She aimed, pumped and shot me right in the chest with a big surge of cold water.
It’s still pretty dangerous at our house, whether or not you are a Knocking-bird – there’s always a chance that something unexpected will hit you.