If Guile Won't Work, Appeal To His Emotions

I've posted notices, put up signs, advertised in all the major media, made verbal and physical threats, yet the birds continue to build nests in the seemingly endless array of nooks and crannies we now have. And don't pay rent. If you build it I will come. Any of you who've crossed your landlord know what I'm talkin' about.

I have one set of very busy wrens of some sort above the back patio that I've grandfathered in until the current kids leave the nest - sorry, but there that was.

Today I decide to purge the door lights outside my office of the doves therein. As I approached the light, not yet even assuming my most threatening posture, a gray mass was seemingly catapulted onto the rock drive in front of me. There, the poor bird was obviously in its death throes, or at least in some sort of horrific agony, a broken wing at the very least, thrashing about, chirrupping, somersaulting. I cautiously approached and this pitiful creature and its torments edged farther away, out into the middle of the driveway. Again I moved to get to the poor thing, again it maintained the same distance between us. What an incredible, Oscar-worthy performance.

When we'd moved our million-years-old dance clear over to in front of the garage door, a seeming miracle occurred. The writhing, miserable creature at Death's door suddenly burst into flight and disappeared around the corner of the next house to the north.

Like so many other feral creatures before me, I lost track of my original purpose, and wandered, dazed and bemused, off to some other endeavor.

Can't be sure of course, but I thought that in the wind coming from the north I heard "Neener neener neener".