HITCHCOCK WAS ON TO SOMETHING...

It all started a few days ago. I went for my first walk of the day in Del Ray. I got to the porch and heard an ominous and threatening chirping noise, but thought nothing of it. I went in and got the dog and brought him out of the house.
A bird swoops down at me, dangerously close to my head. I run like Tippy Hedren away from the porch...wow. Scary.




I later describe the bird to our resident bird expert, Donna. She informs me that it is a mocking bird.


When I take the dog back, I dodge several more kamikaze swoops. The owner is home and informs me that I should be careful, because her neighbor got hit by the same bird in the head. Maybe this was the reason that the owner was home, but preferred that I be the one to walk the dog...hmmm.
Yesterday, Matt and I were walking to our car to go to the show, and we saw "Devil-Cat" (the resident evil looking cat of the neighborhood), being dive bombed by a few mocking birds. The birds were on the ground, level with the cat. They started chirping loudly and flapping their wings, trying to ward the cat off. The cat looked mildly irritated as its tail slowly twitched around....then it backed away from the tree that it was close to...but only for a moment. It stopped and looked back for a minute, and then the dive bombing started. It got hit in the side, and didn't really budge. It laid down in the grass, as if to say, "oooooh...you birds are so scary...*yawn*".
When you see birds attacking a cat, you start to wonder if the world is coming to an end.
Then today, I was in a different neighborhood, walking a Doberman. I let the dog into it's own backyard, and it started to get dive bombed by more mocking birds...the Doberman freaked, yelped and ran back inside. I followed suit, taking the dog's instinct as wisdom.
Strange how Hitchcockian Arlington seems of late...