adrenaline and birds and bats

It came in with a thin whooosh right as I walked out the door of my trailer. Then the crackly boom. I got the immediate grab-n-go adrenaline rush for seven, eight seconds then continued walking to the d-fac for cantaloupe and coffee, Rolling Stone Ray Charles memorial issue rolled up in my hand.
One day I’ll get tired of reporting the mundane details of mortars and rockets but one day even farther down the road I’ll look back on it and say, Man, that was a trip.
Still working on the property book though the KBR rep didn’t show up for yesterday’s post inventory. I called and griped about it but hell, if I wasn’t making $100,000 a year I wouldn’t show up either.
“Uncle Hank I failed outta cosmetology school and got a job at KBR.”
“The Wal-Mart greeter stood at the door handin’ out KBR applications today.”
“What experience have you got?” I got booted out of the Army for smokin’ pot. “Prior military. You’ve got leadership skills, we’ll put you in management.”
SO much for my KBR tirade. When you skim the bottom of a barrel you don’t find lucidity material to work with. That’s why the KBR employees who are competent work really really hard. There are a few of them.
The government pays KBR $400 per person per day to billet, feed, and give office support to contractors. Yours and my tax dollars at work.
But I grow weary with this rant. Lets talk about birds, shall we?
I like the birds around the palace. The large bird population in conjunction with the large feral cat population pokes about a million holes in that theory that outdoor cats have a drastic effect on wild bird populations. These scrawny little felines here have no regular food so if any cat was going to eat a lot of birds these wood.
Still, the trees are full of birds. The last two days I’ve sat under the big tree by the pool taking a break they have left their droopingsing on my DCU shirt and yesterday on the top of my boots. Maybe in all this camoflauge I blend in too well because I don’t think they’ve targeted the Iraqi workers who rest under the tree as well.
But here’s the kind of birds I’ve seen:
Many many sparrows crowd under the shade of the picnic tables out by the pool.
And there are these birds, I want to say a sort of towhee, with grey bodies, brownish grey wings, black heads with big white cheek patches. And there is a dove, often getting into territorial fighting matches where its coos turn to screams. These are regular grey doves with a wavy black ring around their neck and a white patch at the end of their tails.
There is a crow like bird as well. Its call is very human sounding trilled “aarrrr”. Its mostly black with white feathers thought I haven’t seen many of them.
These birds hang out in the trees all over the compound, shuffling in the dried palm fronds, leaving me to wonder if it’s a rat or a bird until you see the dove fly out.
There are also small bats which zip around at dusk when we go out to watch a movie at the pool. They fly low and have almost run into me before but I guess they know what they’re doing so I don’t worry about it too much.