Farrell: How do you shoot a bird with a cartoon gun?

Every morning at 6:20, a small bird wakes me.

He is outside my window. Every single morning. At six-twenty.

His wakeup call goes like this: Chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp. Then he waits 10 seconds.

Chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp. Then he waits again.

On and on and on it goes.

I’m sure I’m wrong, but I think he leaves those intermittent silences for applause.

Chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp.

“I’m Whitney! I’m Mariah! I’m Celine! SHOW ME YOUR LOVE, BLUFFFFFFFTON!”

This bird chirps even on the weekends — because, as you might know, birds don’t have those on their calendars.

Every day of this guy’s life, so far, has been a Monday, and he is fine with that.

It’s very annoying.

And yet he impresses me.

Each time I hear him, I look at my clock just to verify the time.

Chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp.

“6:20 again! How? How? How has nature fined-tuned you to this degree?”

This same bird — at least I think it was him, who can say? — used to wake me at 5:20 a.m. Those were very dark life-ruining days, indeed.

Until daylight saving time.

My finger moved my clocks ahead an hour.

His little bird wing, thank you sweet Earth, did the same on his clocks.

This didn’t make me like him any more, though.

The first time I heard the bird chirp, I was deep into a dream that then became cartoon-like in the haze of waking.

I had morphed from whatever I had been in dream-land into Granny from Looney Tunes.

I could feel the high-neck of my cartoon nightdress around my throat. And I was muttering, “Dagnamit, you kreeeeeecha!”

To my real-life surprise, I shot the bird in my dream.

With a cartoon rifle.

I got him with the first bullet in a burst of feather.

His bird body hung in the air. His eyes bugged out with comical shock. A viking helmet with braids appeared on his head.

“Talk about people not appreciating the arts … chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirp!”

I woke up wondering what would’ve happened if I had really done this. If I had shot at the tree the bird was sitting in just to get him to fly away.

Would my neighbors have been upset? Or would they have understood? Would I have been arrested? How would I have done this without a gun?

The pure hatred I felt for the bird in that first moment overwhelmed me to the point that I had made myself a potential killer.

I barely recognized myself as I thought horrid things about him. SHUT UP. LEAVE. FLY AWAY. Go somewhere else. Why MY window, pal? Where does it say society NEEDS birds anyway?

Then I remembered.

I feed this guy. With a sweet little bird feeder that is very Pinterest-worthy.

I feed him and all his silly, fluffy, adorable friends, whose tweets delight me when I’m awake and whose antics give my cat something to puzzle over in between his many naps.

I invited these birds to my patio to decorate my life.

When I first moved to the Lowcountry, I bought three bird feeders and a bird book. I’d sit in the Carolina room of my house and get excited. All I knew up North were pigeons and seagulls. My new backyard seemed to be nothing short of a wildlife sanctuary in comparison.

A tufted titmouse! A Carolina wren! A nuthatch!

A towhee!

I read somewhere once that we’re losing our songbirds and how, back in the day, the air used to be filled with the sound of bird harmonies.

It makes me sad to think of a world with fewer bird chirps.

Well, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., anyway.

This story was originally published March 28, 2016 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Farrell: How do you shoot a bird with a cartoon gun?."