POOPED ON

I have over three decades of experience in being outside. Oh sure, I may not have done a lot of extreme sports/activities in those three decades but it was still outside. The outside which I have shared with birds, among other animals. The birds which have been known to poop no matter where they are or what they are doing (as in flying).

So this evening I was on my way back from getting some Somali take out and headed back to work. Given that I had a five-day weekend last week from the power outage, I wanted to catch up on some work. I was crossing Cordova towards Waterfront station when I was half way through the crosswalk. I then heard a light smack on the pavement to the left and slightly ahead of me. It could not have been more than three feet from myself. I looked over to where the noise was and saw a big splat of white, like someone had dropped a bottle of correction fluid on the ground. I immediately knew it was bird poop because I’ve had numerous close calls throughout my life. I’ve seen birds fly right above me, only to drop their poopy loads not a foot from where I stood. Each and every single time, I’ve dodged their bombardments.

Seeing the splat next to me, I was relieved that I survived another close call. Not a second later, I realized I was not so fortunate this time around. I was hit on my left hand, specifically it was confined to the ring finger. It wasn’t too bad, it must have been trailing bit of his birdy dump. Size wise it couldn’t have been more in volume than three or four drops from an eyedropper. Area wise, it didn’t cover more than the nail on my pinky perhaps. I looked at it on my finger. It was mostly clear fluid mixed in with some milky white crap.

I was half a block away from the studio which meant it was the closest place to go wash this thing off. I resisted the temptation to fling my finger wildly and wipe it on the nearest tourist around me. I made a concerted effort to not let the large drop of poop on my finger get on any of my other fingers nor my shorts. Luckily, I was holding my dinner in the other hand.

I somehow navigated my way up to the 12th floor just using a single hand. I arrived at the kitchen area, put down my food, and calmly proceeded to the sink. At the sink, I turned on the water with my good hand. Gingerly putting my poop finger into the stream, I washed off the poop as best as I could. I then pumped out a baseball sized ball of foamy hand sanitizer and rubbed it into the as beforementioned poop fingers. I must have ran the finger under water for a good minute before I noticed the bottle of dish washing liquid near the sink. Thinking there isn’t a way to overdo a “poop cleansing”, I proceeded to pour the dishing washing stuff all over my poop finger. I did another lather-rinse cycle. I finally dried off with some paper towels.

If I ever catch that bird (which I did not get a good look at) that pooped on me, I’m gonna hold it down and poop on one of its feet (while it was trying to get a worm back to its nest).