Yesterday, I was awakened by birds, extraordinarily loud birds, which had settled their family into the prime location under my air-conditioning unit. (Actually, I was awakened by my alarm clock because Rob had to be at the airport early, but those birds started in soon after.) "Ha ha," said the birds. "While your ass was still asleep, we were building our nest from scratch and laying our eggs. Now, we are living the Avian Dream, with four chicks and a two-car garage, and what have you accomplished?"

I wanted to show them what an opposable thumb could accomplish by turning on the air conditioner over their vacant little heads. Instead, Tiffany called her friend the aspiring park ranger, who in turn promised to call the Audubon Society for advice. In the meantime, the aspiring park ranger recommended, should we happen to see any of the babies, it was best not to make eye contact. Apparently, newborn animals form an instinctive bond with any creature that meets their eyes early on, and it would not do to have these birds become too trusting of humans, the most dangerous species of all.

Considering that some of my most disastrous moments with the most dangerous species of all also resulted from eye contact (albeit across a smoky room), I was willing to entertain this theory.

For further advice, I called my friend Bryan, a birdwatcher from Tennessee, who wasn't home because he was out watching birds, the supercilious kind that would look down their beaks at an air conditioner in Queens, New York. He called me back later.

Now let me digress for a moment to ask what kind of person has Caller Identification and not an answering machine? I have an answering machine and no Caller Identification, which means I have to pick up the phone to see who is making it ring. If I am not busy, I will converse with that person at length, even though that person may be calling the wrong number, or not speak English, or be peddling a rival long-distance service--or, as is increasingly common these days, a combination of the three. If I am busy, or when I am not at home, my answering machine will take staticky messages that I will ultimately ignore, but at least by leaving a message, the caller feels as if he or she has accomplished something. This sense of accomplishment should be its own reward, as far as I am concerned, because I would not dream of returning a phone call.

Bryan has no answering machine; I was frustrated for the rest of the morning. The birds went about their merry lives. Bryan's Caller Identification led him to call me back that afternoon. The birds listened in. "What kind of birds are they?" he asked. I knew he would.

"Sparrows." Why not? I knew they were not crows, pigeons, seagulls, eagles, swans, or ostriches, so they must, by process of elimination, be sparrows.

Sparrows, he told me, leave the nest after fourteen days. This is cutting it close, as I have to remove the air conditioner in fifteen days, when I change apartments. Joe purchased that, as well; he wrote me a check and everything.

In the meantime, if I am a good person, I will not use the air conditioner, no matter how hot it gets. If Joe is a good person (which he is, despite his assertion to the contrary), perhaps he will accept a few stowaways in the deal. Only, I will warn him, try not to pay attention to anything they have to say. Nobody likes a smug sparrow.