When you are engulfed in flames - By David Sedaris Page 0,59

to blind an international symbol of youth and innocence, or are they simply evil, a quality they possibly share with these two things at the window?

“What do you want from us?” I asked, and the birds stepped back into the flower box, getting a little traction before hurling themselves against the glass.

“They’ll wear themselves out sooner or later,” Hugh said. But they didn’t, not even after the clouds moved in and it began to rain. By late afternoon, they were still at it, soaking wet, but no less determined. I was lying on the daybed, working a crossword puzzle and listening to the distinct sound of feathers against glass. Every two minutes, I’d put aside my paper and walk across the room. “You think it’s so great in here?” I’d ask. “You think we’ve got something you can’t live without?” At my approach, the birds would fly away, returning the moment I’d settled back down. Then I’d say, “All right, if you really want to come in that much . . .”

But the two lost interest as soon as the windows were open. And so I’d close them up again and return to my puzzle, at which point the birds would reappear and continue their assault. Then I’d say, “All right, if you really want to come in that much . . .”

Einstein wrote that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. That said, is it crazier to repeatedly throw yourself against a window, or to repeatedly open that window, believing the things that are throwing themselves against it might come into your house, take a look around, and leave with no hard feelings?

I considered this as I leafed through Birds of the World, an illustrated guidebook as thick as a dictionary. After learning about the Philippine eagle — a heartless predator whose diet consists mainly of monkeys — I identified the things at the window as chaffinches. The size was about right, six inches from head to tail, with longish legs, pink breasts, and crooked white bands running along the wings. The book explained that they eat fruit, seeds, and insects. It stated that some chaffinches prefer to winter in India or North Africa, but it did not explain why they were trying to get into my house.

“Could it be something they picked up in Africa?” I wondered. And Hugh, who had lived there until his late teens, said, “Why are you asking me?”

When the sun finally set, the birds went away, but they were at it again the following morning. Between their running starts and their pitiful back-assed tumbles, the flowers in the window box had been trashed, petals and bits of stem scattered everywhere. There were scratch marks on the windowpanes, along with what I’m guessing was saliva, the thick, bubbly kind that forms when you’re enraged.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

And Hugh told me to ignore them. “They just want attention.” This is his explanation for everything from rowdy children to low-flying planes. “Turn the other way and they’ll leave,” he told me. But how could I turn away?

The solution, it seemed, was to make some kind of a scarecrow, which is not a bad project if you’re in the proper mood. My first attempt involved an upside-down broom and a paper bag, which I placed over the bristles and drew an angry face on. For hair, I used a knot of steel wool. This made the figure look old and powerless, an overly tanned grandma mad because she had no arms. The birds thought it was funny, and after chuckling for a moment or two they took a step back and charged against the window.

Plan B was much easier, involving nothing more than a climb to the attic, which Hugh uses as his studio. A few years earlier, bored, and in the middle of several projects, he started copying head shots he’d clipped from the newspaper. The resulting portraits were done in different styles, but the ones that best suited my purposes looked Mesopotamian and pictured the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11. Mohammed Atta fit perfectly into the windowpane, and his effect was immediate. The birds flew up, saw a terrorist staring back at them, and took off screaming.

I was feeling very satisfied with myself when I heard a thud coming from behind a closed curtain next to the bookcase. Another trip upstairs, another hijacker, and so on, until all four living room windows