Audible Confusion

My hubby keeps these machines running like well-oiled, um… machines.

Some weeks ago, Brent went into the garage to clean and lubricate his bike chain. Perfect weather, plenty of daylight… but something conspired to hinder him.

The local wildlife.

I should explain. He had wiped the excess lube from the chain by turning the pedal with one hand and holding a rag around a section of chain with the other. There should have been no sound but a faint, metallic gliding.

Yet he heard his freshly lubed chain squeaking.

Had he missed a spot? Accidentally grabbed the bottle of wood glue instead of bike lube?

No, the source of the annoying sound was outside the garage–the deceptive little “Chain-squeak Bird.” There’s probably a more common name for them, but when you’re bicycling along and one sings from a nearby tree, it sounds exactly like your chain. The fastidious rider can go crazy worrying about chain wear.

“It’s kind of confusing,” Brent admits.

Ol’ Chain-squeak isn’t the only winged trickster out there, either. Another example is the “Heart-rate Monitor Target-Zone Warbler.” This one bothers me, but not Brent. See, my heart-rate monitor emits a faint “fleedle-fleedle” when my pulse goes above or below the “target zone,” which it often does because the default “zone” is ridiculously low and I’ve been too lazy to change it. The “HRMTZ Warbler” mimics this sound perfectly.

“Leave me alone,” I bark at the overprotective monitor–or the overprotective bird, it doesn’t matter which.

Sometimes our feathered friends forget about cycling and try to lure us into spending a lazy evening in front of the television. One species sits on the neighbor’s roof and calls out, “Video, video, video, video.” Then his little buddy pipes up, “Netflix, Netflix, Netflix!”

One day, after a few rounds of this exchange, another bird butted in, “Chea-perr, chea-perr, chea-perr, chea-perr!”

I don’t know… I like a bargain, but I suspect that last bird’s videos are pirated.

Guess I’ll go see what looks good on Netflix.

Thanks for reading!
Tailwinds,
Jan