Dana versus the woodpecker

Yesterday evening around dusk as I lay relaxing in my bed with a book and in that lazy, peaceful place just on the verge of napping, I was startled out of bed by a loud, rhythmic tapping coming from the front of my house. It sounded like someone impatiently rapping on one of the sliding glass doors leading out to the deck. As I groggily stumbled out to the living room ready to curse at whoever had the gall to interrupt my respite, I caught the out-of-focus fluttering of an avian figure as she flitted away from the window. Oh well, I shrugged, some bird got disoriented and decided my window looked like a worm or something, but now it's gone. So I crawled back into the warm embrace of my blankets,
infected with happy thoughts about the strange wonders of the animal kingdom.

Ah, but how wrong that slumbrous assumption turned out to be. Promptly at 7 am this morning I again heard the murderous rapping. I shook off whatever (usually macabre but otherwise quickly forgotten) dream-webs were still wending their way through my semi-unconsciousness and again staggered out of bed. The scene in that brilliant Hitchcock movie flashed through my half-asleep mind - was this one bird the harbinger of a deadly hoard soon to lay siege to my fortress-home? Had I unwittingly done something to offend my avian brothers and sisters to warrant such attacks?

What struck me as even more odd was that my usually perky guard dog Emmitt, who every day vigorously greets the arrival of the school bus, the mail person's compact car, any arrival or departure of neighbors and even passing trucks with a peppering of barks and growls, had not made a peep during either of these cacaphonic affronts. Was my faithful friend in league with these feathered rapscallions in some sort of bizarre and brazen coup attempt? Or did he know more about this than he was letting on and was even now only feigning sleep while really cowering down into his doggy-bed in fear? Or was he just getting old and deaf - he is after all 77 in human years...

The front of my house consists primarily of two sets of large, sliding glass doors. On the outside, separating the panes within each set is a thin strip of wood, maybe four inches wide. It was the right-most strip that was the focus of the still unviewed bird's assault. As I peeked around to get a better view from the kitchen, I caught the unmistakable levering, crimson-maned hammer-head of an as yet unidentified species of woodpecker. I should have prefaced all this by stating that I don't know shit about the maintenance practicalities of being a homeowner, or carpentry or any other of the skill crafts, but I did know that having a woodpecker try to dig it's home into mine was not good. I only hoped that these last two attacks were only the beginning and that this woodpecker had not already been hard at work tearing up my woodwork for the last week while I was at work. And that his object of attraction was not that bane of all homeowners existence; termites.

After a short return to slumber and a quick consult with the guru of easy answers, Google, I set about the task of preparing my defenses against further picadae incursia. To that effect and not wanting to waste any more time of my weekend than I had to, I hastily tacked up some thick, folded-over plastic sheeting over these strips of wood. I sort of wanted to get a picture of one of these magnificent creatures before doing so, but I also wanted to discourage the actions before it went any further. So that's how it stands now. I only hope my little plastic fix doesn't just result in providing a natural sound buffer to more pecking rather than an actual deterrent.

Either way, I'm going to mark this epic battle down as a win in personkind's never-ending war to eliminate all peaceful co-existence with nature...