So Take These Broken Wings

Driving to class tonight, I heard that Mister Mister song from the 80's, "Take These Broken Wings" or something to that effect. This song will be forever linked to a bird I encountered today.

One of my co-workers, The Edge, and I park next to each other every single day at work. Her car is blue, mine is black. Both were dirty. This morning, however, there was a terribly-confused robin who fluttered between our cars. She was either sick, hurt, had a broken wing, was schizophrenic, or was trying to mate with our vehicles. For hours, she fluttered back and forth between The Edge's car and mine, happily crapping along the way. It seemed as though she was trying to get into my car, perhaps confused by the sunroof. Did she *know* about the 50 lbs of birdseed I have stashed in my tire well? I ran out there at lunch, glanced at the cars, and went on my way.

Around 2 p.m., The Edge returned from lunch and alerted me to the bird's fury. Insane Robin was steadily becoming more and more upset, fluttering faster. The Edge said there were scratches on the cars and that she was loading her Red Ryder BB gun that she stole from Ralphie last Christmas. Laughing as I walked out the door to survey the damage, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this:

Yes, you see correctly. Those would be scratches in the clearcoat. So much for having a shiny new car. [You can kind of see my new patent leather shoes in the reflection, though]. Luckily, Jack has some buffing compound and most of the scratches *should* be erasable. I don't think my insurance policy covers Insane Robin scratches. I'm hardly superstitious, but what would they have thought if, in Biblical times, a schizophrenic finch scraped up a chariot? All Hitchcock references aside, I will now definitely be wary of mentally-imbalanced birds.