You remember 2020, right? That special time when we all collectively lost our minds, baked bread like it was currency, and cut our own hair with salad scissors. Me? I went full birdman. Or as my son once joked, “Dude loves his birds!”
See, I’m your typical Type A, firstborn, gotta-fix-everything alpha guy. CEO energy. I’m the one who organizes the family car rides and gives the waiter performance reviews. But when the world slammed on the brakes and handed me a full existential crisis, I had two choices: scream into a pillow or… start building real estate for birds.
Naturally, I chose the birds.
It began innocently. A few online bird cams. A couple of books. A membership to the Norman Bird Sanctuary. Guided walks where I pretended not to look amazed when I saw my first…anything. Then—like Geppetto with a Home Depot credit card—I started building birdhouses. Many, many birdhouses.
One of them was a masterpiece: a Barred Owl house so regal, I expected the Audubon Society to show up with a trophy. The owl? Never came. But a raccoon moved in and used it as a bachelor pad, possibly hosting poker nights and stealing snacks from my trash.
Still, my other birdhouses are fully booked. I’m talking standing-room-only. If birds had Yelp, I’d be five stars with a waitlist.
But I didn’t stop there.
You think I was going to buy a birdbath like some kind of backyard amateur? Please. I went full prehistoric. I found a chunk of granite in the woods, dragged it home like a lunatic Viking, and then spent days chiseling, grinding, and Googling “how not to lose fingers to masonry wheels.”
When I finished, I had what can only be described as the Fred Flintstone Signature Series Bird Spa. Rough-hewn. Lopsided. But glorious.
And you know what? The birds love it. Cardinals, chickadees, sparrows—they splash around like it’s spring break in Daytona. I sit back, coffee in hand, and watch them living their best lives.
In the end, I came out of the pandemic with a deeper love of nature, an alarming collection of bird-themed tools, and a granite bicep from hell. And I’ve learned that when the world shuts down, sometimes the best way to keep moving… is to build a raccoon condo and chisel a bird Jacuzzi.
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