A wing and a sprayer

Sure. If there had been a choice, I absolutely would have chosen actual manna from, you know, heaven. Who wouldn’t? But there wasn’t, and instead I got bird shit – on my head, on my hand, and in an especially embarrassing spot near the center of my pants about three inches south of the belt line.

I mean, this only happens in cartoons, right? Or in Mel Brooks movies. Or, if you’re really, really lucky, during a televised press conference in what used to be the White House Rose Garden. Oh, please, please. Let it happen there. But no. It occurs as I’m chaise-lounging by the pool, nursing a gin and tonic. Or maybe it was a Bordeaux blanc. It probably was both.

And as you might expect, it came out of nowhere. I was just sitting around, entertaining the adults – exercising a talent for faux worldliness that pretty much all my friends tolerate in exchange for free wine – when the muscles surrounding a randomly passing cloaca cut loose and exposed me as someone who desperately needed to clean up his act. Just an arbitrary natural occurrence, right? A bona fide crap shoot.

Or was it? I decided a little research was in order to ascertain whether something else might be at play. Something a little more newsworthy.

As part of my online analysis of the subject (Yes, I spent an inordinate amount of time coming up with that exact word), the experts at naturewithbirds.com assured me that, “while it might feel like bad luck when it happens, data and observational studies suggest that certain factors make these incidents more predictable than random.” I knew it, God damn it. I knew it.

With a little further help from that world-famous intellect Alphonso Imbroglioni (AI), I was able to determine that roughly 5% of Earthlings get splattered by bird crap every year. Granted, that sounds a little iffy, but they’ve got a whole page devoted to the topic and it sounds, well, really professional. Sure. I could spend a little more time looking for actual quotes from birdologists and statistical specialists, but I’m going with it. I don’t give a shit.

Punch in the numbers and you’re left with the conclusion that some 17 million Americans get unexpectedly doused with a special blend of concentrated nitrogen compounds and pure avian ejectamenta over your average 12-month period. By the way, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the look of the stuff depends on what’s been munched for lunch. According again to Nature With Birds, fruit-eaters produce softer, more colorful droppings, while insectivores and seed-eaters tend to manufacture firmer, darker droppings. I’m convinced mine had spent some time at Chipotle.

You have to remember that the exact number of people with targets on their heads is a little hard to pin down because, well … bird poop incidents apparently aren’t important enough to be recorded in official health or environmental databases. As one of 17 million U.S. victims, I think that needs to change.

And it wouldn’t take much, either. Consider this: Now that the current Washington administration has decided clean air and water aren’t THAT important, I imagine there’s probably a lot of vacant office space available where a slew of EPA officials once worked. How hard would it be to fill some of it with a shiny new agency called the Federal Department of Flying Crap?

Hold on. Hold on. We may have to readdress. I think we might already have one of those.

It’s called the White House Office of Communications.