Woody The Woodpecker

the woodpecker

I don’t hate him. I don’t even begrudge the fact that he chose us out of all the houses in the neighborhood. In a way I suppose I should feel honored for that. It wasn’t always this way. It started when we switched from wood to gas in our fireplaces. We’re older now and the wood was messy and difficult to collect and store anyway. The gas is cleaner and more consistent in its burn and appearance. We could have gotten a remote when we had them installed but we chose not to add another remote to our growing collection, one for the TV, one for the cable, and one for netflix. In the old days old retired guys like me only got their exercise by rising from the sofa and walking across the living room to change the channel on the TV by turning a knob. Lots of young people probably only think a knob is what is hanging between their legs. I hear them talk about ‘polishing their knob’. They think they are putting one over on the old man. Inside I am laughing at how clever they think they are when in truth they are idiots. I know this because I was once just like them and I am proud to say that I have striven most of my life to hang onto that mantle. I consider it a compliment when someone says I am stupid, although I am not really stupid. Stoopid indicates a lack of intelligence. I am intelligent. I am just dumb. I am proud to be dumb. I am not alone in my dumbness. Being dumb just means you think you have a knowledge which does not exist. Most knowledge does not really exist anyway, it is just opinion. Almost always someone comes along with a better opinion and then we say that science or society has advanced when all we really did was change our mind about something we previously considered to be a “fact” or a “truth”. I guess I choose to be stoopid because I don’t really believe in much. I just kind of wing it. Winging it is like flying without wings. You move through life on a current of faith, trusting that the relationship or friendship you have with life or God is a sound relationship that can be trusted to endure. So far it has. As long as I remain “dumb” in the ways of men I am immune to most of their stupidity. So the woodpecker came to us one day and announced his presence. Loudly. You see, when the gas fireplaces were installed they needed to be vented. This meant that large cylindrical aluminum air vents were placed atop our chimney flues. Two of them side by side looking very sleek and modern and metallic. The woodpecker could not resist them. Prior to this he would come every year and sharpen that woody woodpecker beak of his on the nearby streetlamp casing. We would hear him tap tap taping or rather clink clink clinking. Kind of like peas falling on an upturned bucket in the neighbors yard. An interesting distant sound that served to break up the ordinary silence of our neighborhood. Pleasantly interesting but not disturbing. It was, as most things impinging on our consciousness usually are, someone else’s problem. All of that changed when our vents were installed. So shiny and new and irresistible for woody. Sometimes when we entertain some new feature of our lives we do so with trepidation. That new Korean Barbecue might be a little spicy, I better go easy there. Not so with Woody. I’m not sure how old he is in woodpecker years, but in human years I peg him at about 14 years old. Curious, fearless, and what kids nowadays like to refer to as “All In”.

Hey, if you’re going to do something don’t half-step. The emergency rooms are filled with these guys every time a new toy comes out: skate boards, pogo sticks, hover boards, whatever. Of course there are ordinary instructions for careful safe usage, but what fun is that. Hey! Try it from off the roof Larry. It doesn’t help much when TV shows like wacky sports and America’s Funniest Home Videos make you famous and offer you incentives. Anyway, in bird land, this is Woody. Nothing half way. It happened the first time on a Saturday morning around 9 o’clock while Doreen and I were watching, of all things, an animal show. We thought the furnace was going to blow up. From out of the fireplace there came the sound of what can only be described as machine gun fire. When you hear such an immediate sound your first reaction is to dive to the floor and seek cover. We both jumped and grabbed each other, looking around frantically half expecting the windows to shatter and a hail of bullets to come through the house. It was deadly quiet for a moment and then full bore again. This time our eyes were directed to the source of the sound, the fireplace. We were able to place the unfamiliar sound as coming from the flue in staccato reverberations. The source must either be downstairs or up above. We approached the hearth listening closer and determined it was from the roof. Then it dawned on us that it was the same sound as we had heard from the streetlamp many times before, albeit much more pronounced. Whereas before it had always been muffled and distant, it was now immediate and overwhelming. I ran outside to the front of the house in bedroom slippers and pajamas to see what the commotion was. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Christmas story: “…ma in her kerchief and I in my cap had just settled down for a long winter’s nap. When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.” And what to my wandering eyes should appear but a goddamn woodpecker wrecking my ear. I looked for a stone to throw and scare him away but there were none immediately available so I stepped inside the house and pressed the garage door opener. The sound of the opening garage door frightened him away and off he flew. I went outside again and stared in disbelief at the chimney vents. They gleamed in the morning sunlight. Was it my imagination or were they laughing at me. They seemed smug, as though they held a secret that I was unaware of, like a friend seems when they are in collusion for your surprise birthday party. Oh this was a surprise alright and they stood there staring at me, my friends the vents, only something was different about them and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Probably because it was so high up on the roof I couldn’t reach it. So I reached instead for a tennis ball in the garage. We kept the ones we found while walking in the dog walk area behind the college at the end of our street. We had five or six half chewed raggedity ones in a bucket in the garage. We do not have a dog. Why do we even have these I thought looking into the bucket. We have them because we are not normally wasteful people. We were both brought up to “waste not - want not” whatever the hell that means. So when we see things that may not have seen the last of their purposefulness we save them. In other words, we are junk collectors. Right here I could go into a long diatribe about what is and is not junk and especially the difference between what a man sees as junk verses what a woman might see as junk, because there is a distinct difference in categories of junk and then that would lead to an argument of value and that would lead to a discussion of quality and we could go on and on until we get to where I am today. After a lifetime of questions I have boiled it down to belief. We all create our own little worlds based on our own little beliefs. Everyone believes in something. Although I like to say I believe in nothing, that would be impossible to argue assuming you are here to argue at all because if you didn’t believe in life you would of course be absent from it. Most people share common beliefs. They overlap in their beliefs, politics, religion, sex…hey! come to think of it all the basic things that people are told never to discuss because most such discussions lead to arguments and of course arguments escalate from words to worse because when you are not being heard you begin to feel the need to be more assertive maybe by grabbing and shaking “some sense” into them or using your fists to pound some sense into them or if all else fails you can condense all your beliefs into a small lead ball and blast some sense into them. Arguments and disputes are differences in beliefs. I believe I should have the right to do with my body whatever I please and you say well that is fine as long as you don’t put it on display publicly naked because actually it is quite an ugly body and I do not wish to be coerced into viewing it. Oh, and incidentally, you certainly can make that decision to fill it up with all the vile smoke you choose, but do not inflict me with your smoke in the process. I do not wish to be your collateral damage. You may certainly choose to terminate your pregnancy but can we discuss the rights of your unborn child?

Over the years it has gotten interesting and complicated this entanglement of beliefs. We’ve watched groups of beliefs grow. Medical beliefs, political beliefs, educational beliefs, societal beliefs, entertainment beliefs, etc. etc. etc. As each of these beliefs were formed and solidified they changed. Most began with one or two individuals and then gathered support from others who grew to embrace similar beliefs. The problem we encounter when beliefs are born is that they gravitate to one another and collect until they grow into an entity of their own. Eventually all institutions of belief, no matter what the original stated purpose was, become concerned chiefly with survival. I suppose you could say that about all life forms in general, that they develop to a point where survival becomes the chief objective. It is unfortunate that some of our original institutions have become repurposed to survival. Since the yardstick for survivability in our culture is wealth, most organizations have now adopted the business model of selling or merchandising their “product” to ensure the income they equate with survivability. Education is notorious for this. Young people graduate college with a huge debt hovering over them. Medicine is another victim of this strategy. Originally medicine was intended to relieve suffering and extend lives. Now medicine is the principal cause of bankruptcy in our society and insurance and prescription costs have grown to replace food and rent costs for some elderly patients. Charitable organizations are another victim of this scenario. Some charities funnel more than 50% of their donations into “administrative costs”. Many people who head up “non-profit” charitable organizations draw salaries in the hundred of thousand of dollars range. Large organizations are comprised of large groups of people with similar beliefs and when the belief is profit-oriented the organization loses its original intention. Whew! I think I just lost weight, I’m going to go check my bathroom scale before I start Woody Two Shoes.

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