Our home is being terrorized by Little Birds.

It started a little over a year ago when “Little Bird Family” moved into our free-standing, stainless steel patio heater. It was late summer when these hardy cactus wrens began unloading the tall grasses, random twigs and bits of plastic that were their worldly possessions into this de-luxe apartment in the sky.

When you think about it, the free-standing, stainless steel patio heater is the penthouse of avian condominiums – especially when compared to the outhouse of birdie living: the multi-family dwelling in a random tree, shrub or buckhorn cactus. The patio heater sits under our porch, protected from the rain and sun; it’s tall and slippery enough to deter climbing predators; and it’s owned by two big-hearted sapsuckers that couldn’t bring themselves to incinerate a pair of fine, upstanding examples of the State Bird of Arizona and their fledgling family – especially since it was 104 degrees out and the property was essentially vacant.

In fact, Ma and Pa Bertinelli took Ma and Pa Little Bird under our wings and fenced off the backyard so its rightful residents, Coolidge and Winslow Big Dog, could not terrorize the Little Birds when they decided to leave the nest. Unfortunately, the sequestered dogs left ample opportunity for Neighborhood Feral Cat to sneak into our yard and launch the Big Dogs into a paroxysm of angry warnings about the murder three of the Little Baby Birds that the dogs were now powerless to prevent. Two of the Little Baby Birds managed to fly that spring… and since it was once again 104 degrees out, Ma and Pa Bertinelli decided we’d get around to emptying the debris out of the deluxe apartment in the sky… someday… when it was cooler.

Well, you know where this is headed: Like the snowbirds that return each winter from Michigan, Minnesota and Ellenois to clog up our Arizona highways with their puttering RVs, Little Bird Family returned to its winter home. In fact, all they needed to do to spiff up the place was update the weedy decor, and they were back in Little Bird business: Laying eggs and barking at the dogs.

Unfortunately, we now had the nice patio furniture to go with the free-standing, stainless steel patio heater… But when faced with their eviction or incineration, we instead decided to haul blankets out to our love-seat and watch in voyeuristic admiration as Pa Little Bird wooed Ma Little Bird in their stainless steel love-nest. Winter came and went. The Big Dogs dug holes in the yard. The Neighborhood Feral Cat lurked on the periphery. Every day, we whispered to the Big Dogs: Baby birds taste bad. Feral cats are fair game.

Then one morning, Pa Bertinelli delivered his stork-like good news: The Little Baby Birds are back.

If we were quiet – very quiet – when we opened the back door, we might hear the plaintive cheeping of hungry Little Baby Birds, before Coolidge and Winslow blundered to the fence to announce their presence to the unsuspecting neighborhood. Then Pa Little Bird or Ma Little Bird would squawk at us from the eaves or the neighbor’s chimney or the whip-like branches of our mesquite tree. We would gently shut the door and watch as they took turns, darting to and fro, with fat beetles in their beaks, ready to regurgitate into the yawning gullets of their growing brood.

Eventually we could see their Little Baby flat-topped heads popping above the nest-edge. Finches would sit on the wilting ceiling fan blades, begging them to show their faces, until Ma and Pa Little Bird returned to shoo those nasty interlopers away.

And then one day when we came home, Coolidge greeted us at the door, not with a rolled up newspaper or a bleached out chew-bone, but a mushy remnant of unfeathered baby bird. Winslow smelled like she’d spent the better part of the afternoon rolling in said carcass. He was so proud of his special find… and she stunk like a barnyard in August. Coolidge deposited his trophy on the carpet at our feet; Winslow attempted to demonstrate her patented “carcass roll,” and Pa Bertinelli scooped the former member of Little Bird Family up in a paper towel and offered it over the fence for the coyotes, javelinas and feral cats.

One down… and maybe four to go, we could never be certain as their heads popped like whack-a-moles whenever the backdoor creaked on its hinges. Eventually we saw two juveniles hopping around the yard – their wings still damp and uncertain as Ma and Pa Little Bird barked fiercely at them to just fly already. Neighborhood Feral Cat had long since been flushed from its lurking by Coolidge. It would not darken our yard without severe consequences. Dead Baby Bird may be a tasty treat, but Neighborhood Feral Cat would be a gastronomic smackdown.

Soon enough, the Little Bird Family fledged. They fluttered like Woodstocks off into the sunset, in search of their own beetles and free-standing stainless steel patio-heater condominiums. Soon we’d have ours back, in time for another hundred days above 100 degrees.

Chests puffed with pride at the circle of life, and all that, Ma and Pa Bertinelli breathed a sigh of relief –

And then the mentally challenged Brown-Crested Flycatcher moved in… but not into the deluxe apartment in the sky. No, the Brown-Crested Flycatcher basically sits and shits on top of Pat’s grill… when he’s not fighting his own reflection all of the east- and west-facing windows on our house… at 4:45 in the morning and 7:15 in the evening.

No wonder the Little Bird Family has flown the coop: The mentally challenged Brown-Crested Flycatcher has not ceased its painful rapping, rapping on our window panes for one long month and more.

Quoth the Bertinellis: Nevermore.

We’ve tried all of the peaceful ways of discouraging the Brown-Crested Flycatcher – taping Mardi Gras tinsel to the back window; whipping open the blinds mid-tap; pounding on the windows; sending out the dogs; yelling at the damn bird to ‘GO AWAY! GET OUT OF HERE’ as if he were some shiftless teenager. Pat finally moved the grill to a different position – exposing himself to a direct broil from the sun’s rays but removing the Brown-Crested Flycatcher’s Char-grilled toilet from a path of direct reflection.

That worked for about a week – one glorious week of silence, no staccato alarm clocks, no window-to-window drum rolls, no angry Brown-Crested Flycatcher diatribes (neither from him, nor us).

During that tapless interlude, the Little Bird Family came back to check out the old neighborhood, and I realized that our avian adventures could be seen as a greater metaphor for our desert-dwelling lives: We have moved into their habitat and altered it in irrevocable ways… and in their own small free-standing stainless steel patio heater-squatting, manic window-tapping fashion, these cactus wrens and brown-crested flycatchers are flipping us the bird for our imperious colonization of their former lands. Revenge of the Birds, if you will.

Or they just know a good thing when the see it (the Little Bird Family) and don’t really have all of their faculties (the Brown-Crested Nutjob). It truly is the circle of life.