Sometime around 4:00 a.m., I hear it. It’s cute, at first. Chirp. Chirp. But then, it doesn’t stop. It gets louder, and more persistent, singing its happy little morning song. But it’s not even the crack of dawn yet. It’s flipping four o’clock in the morning. Chirp, chirp. Chirp. I turn to my other side and plant my ear firmly in the pillow. Chirp, chirp. I close my eyes, but now, I can’t NOT hear it. Chirp, chirp, chirp. I turn the fan up a notch to drown out the noise, but I can still hear the little bastard outside my window. Chirp, chirp, chirp. The fan is on full blast now, but I still hear that tiny squeak. I yank another pillow over my other ear and drape my arm over it to drown out the noise. I don’t hear it anymore. But, I can’t sleep like that, either. So I remove the pillow. Chirp, chirp, chirp! I groan, open my eyes, stare at the ceiling, and listen to that little asshole outside my window a while longer. The sun comes up, and I can still hear him over the sound of the whirring fan. Chirp. Chirp, chirp! Just as I’m wishing for a bee-bee gun and reveling in the sick satisfaction of imagining the cute, fuzzy little guy plummeting to a gruesome death two stories below…it stops.

I bury my head in the pillow and breathe a heavy sigh of relief. I close my eyes. My tense muscles relax.

And then the cats start up. Chasing each other around the foot of the bed. Dashing under it. Knocking shit off the end table. Meowing insistently at the door.

Cats are assholes, too. But then, we already knew that.