My eyes have been opened to a whole new phenomenon out there – birds who crash into windows hard enough to attach their dander and fluff to windows. Now, most people claim that birds see the “sky” in the reflection of the window so they just keep on flying, and well…go splat.
I would like to offer a different theory – they do this on purpose; it’s pure ego. Judging from the imprints they realized they screwed up about .001 seconds before the actual hit. Otherwise, you’d have the round bop of a bird head on the window and a bird below, rubbing his noggin, looking around ashamed to see if anyone saw him just make an ass of himself. In some of these photo’s you can even see the little feet, pushed on the glass at the exact second I imagine the bird thought to himself, “oh shit….”.
I think they see their reflection flying at themselves, think it’s another bird and their ego kicks in. They have to play “chicken” about it. “I’m not gonna move over, damn him..I was here first…I haven’t gone through 2 winters to have some punk-ass kid force me out of my flight path”. They figure they’ll swoop by, graze the other bird and give him a good scare so next time, he knows this is not fun and games. Like you do to people walking down the middle of the aisle in parking lots, oblivious to the fact that it is a parking lot and people actually drive cars, trying to park. Even though you may politely follow them for yards trying to make your presence known, patiently hoping they’ll take the hint and move their fat asses over, still they mosey along like it’s a Sunday stroll. So you floor it and WHIP by missing them by millimeters, just catching the edge of a bag they’re carrying, ripping it out of their hands and scattering their stuff all over the ground.
Oh yeah, like I’m the only one who does that.
That one cat thay my wife and I had–the one you referred to as devil cat–once tried to run through a storm door. It was one of those doors that has glass almost all the way to ground with the just a small border of metal track at the bottom.
She was in that stage of a cat’s life–about eight months old–when they for some reason have a habit of doing something stupid that results in their demise. Anyhow, to make a long story short. We had just cleaned to glass and the way the sun was shining it almost looked as if there was no glass. So, she got about 100 feet head start and hit it head first at a full sprint. She hit it so hard that the door opened up, but she wasn’t aware of her success, because she was lying in the floor having spasms. I assumed she had broken her neck, but apparently she was just stunned, because after about thirty seconds she got up and stumbled off with her tail between her legs.
That must be what turned on that cat’s evil switch. It was a demon I tell ya!
I had a collie/lab mix that would get all excited when he saw a squirrel/rabbit etc, jumping around, barking. until it let ‘instinct’ take over…then he’d run full bore…into the sliding glass door. This happened all the freakin time. Great dog…just not a very smart one.
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Our cats would sometimes do stupid stuff… then they’d walk off looking like “I totally meant to do that.”
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