Fiction Friday – If Walls Could Talk – Bird House

I’ve been sitting on the fence post for what must be a decade of summers, autumns, winters and springs.

I began my life painted and trimmed with a shingled roof with a peak so I could shed rain and slough off the snow. A particular sized hole with a small round peg marked my one and only door.

I began as a teenager’s science project.

He was trying to study the population of some sort of tree sparrow. I never understood how one bird house could represent a whole group of birds. I think he was supposed to put more of my likenesses up across the country side or maybe in the city.

My entry was cored to specific measurements to help insure the exact kind of bird he wanted would come and nest inside.

He should have picked another kind of bird to study. Maybe crows who lived behind fast food places so they could gather a nonstop supply of fries would have been a good choice. I wonder if someone has studied the rate of heart attacks on city crows? If I could talk, I’d tell the kid to give it a go. Do crows nest in birdhouses? Look at me! A crow can’t fit in here. Never mind.

But like I said, I’ve been sitting here ten years. The kid is a grown up by now and probably doesn’t even remember this project.

No one came to nest. Some birds swooped inside, maybe stray city birds thinking I had seeds inside but no one stayed, no one brought twigs and twine and scraps to make a nest.
A Birdhouse

My roof is still good. My wood has gone soft, the paint has bubbled on one side of me and I don’t think a passerby even sees me. I am blending in. I’m unused, uncorrupted and unnecessary. A forgotten project. I don’t know how long I’ll be this way.

What happened to the kid who built me? Will he drop by some summer day with children of his own? Will he stop and say “I made that?”

Have the specific birds who were supposed to move in extinct? Did they ever exist? Is there a possibility that the kid got my dimensions wrong? My hole is too small? My insides too big?

Sigh.

Bird House __