By Maryanna Gabriel
“Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.”
Edgar Allen Poe
He’s back. I have been experiencing a robin pecking at my car for what I assumed were bugs as I had just driven across the prairies. The tapping continued after I washed the car, and when he did not desist then I washed the car again. I would awaken from my sleep at dawn to the sounds of the robin (Turdus migratorius) tapping, particularly at the driver headlight. Fearing damage to the car, I began to take evasive action. Lest it be a territorial nesting issue, I moved the car to the edge of the driveway. Still Turdus did not desist. Puzzled I used the remote to make the car honk when he tapped. It only seemed to increase the attacks on the headlight. “How peculiar,” I thought. I began to feel like I was in a strange Walt Disney movie, with the car honking, lights flashing, and old Turdus hopping around without any of the migratorius. I shared what I was going through with a friend who
was staying with me. We remarked to each other that Turdus had a particularly bright yellow beak and the white band around his eyes seemed emphasized somehow. All robins started to take on a nightmarish quality for me and something benign and theoretically cheerful began to feel Hitchcockish. It seemed to me the robin was following me around the property, watching me from the roof eve, and hopping nearby me in the garden. One day I came home and the robin was sitting on the lawn outside the gate waiting for me. Our eyes locked. Ignoring the situation, I came into the house to begin the task of unloading the groceries when suddenly, the robin flew at the sliding glass doors with wings fully outspread. My heart thumping, I thought, “He is trying to come into the house!” I walked into the next room and he flew at those windows too this time leaving beak marks as he tapped. Chills went through me. “You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried,” I thought to myself. “This is so weird.” On a subsequent trip to a nearby nursery, I mentioned to the owner what I was going through. The nursery owner said he had a degree in biology and he felt that the robin was going after his own reflection. “Maybe,” I thought uncertainly, inwardly feeling there was a component missing to this theory. The tapping on the window continued and the smear marks increased and then the day came that he came to the window ledge where I write at my desk, not an easy feat mind, as the ledge is aluminum and quite narrow. He had a large wiggly worm in his beak and he was looking at me as though he was presenting to me something quite wonderful, much like a man with a diamond engagement ring. He seemed so pleased with himself. “Am I being courted?” I wondered. Friends and family visited, there was much coming and going, the robin disappeared, and I forgot about dear Turdus, worms not exactly being the key to my heart but feeling somewhat more warmly now nonetheless. I assumed he had gone off with a much more feathered wife to nest somewhere. This week, he is back. “Is that you?” I silently asked trying to assess the white band around the eye as I quietly went about my business in the yard. Quoth the robin, “Nevermore.” I am just thankful the tapping has stopped.
