Sleepy Homeowner Lives to Kill a Mockingbird

Nature is a marvelous thing, but not at 3 a.m. and not in my backyard.

These spring nights, my little patch of green is an environmental battleground. On one side, there’s the mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos), whose nonstop shrieking--”Chip chip chirrup, bop bop shebop, fool’s in bed!”--is designed to impress female mockingbirds and also to drive the hapless homeowner insane.

On the other side is me (Homo suburbus), lying sleepless in a pile of twisted sheets, plotting my next move.

You can imagine who’s winning.

Like the gopher, the mosquito, the rat and the cockroach, the mockingbird suffers our presence with a smirk on its face. For it knows that when civilization is nothing more than a smoldering heap of silicon chips, it will still be around smirking, breeding like crazy, and shrieking: “Rama lama ding dong! Doo wah diddy! Fool’s in bed!”

In desperation, I consulted Manuel Marin, an ornithologist at the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in Camarillo.

He told me that the mockingbird is the state bird in Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Of course, those are places where people tend to stay up all night anyway, shootin’ possums and fixin’ flats.

Marin said mockingbirds sing an enormous variety of songs, imitating everything from other birds to barking dogs.

He said he enjoys their songs.

Personally, I don’t care if they’re singing the “Ode to Joy” in 12-part harmony, in the original German, they still bug me.

He told me there was absolutely nothing I could do in these weeks of exuberant mockingbird mating--except for one longshot.

Yes? Please! What is it?

“You might get rid of all the street lights,” he said. “And get rid of the moon, particularly when it’s full.”

I’m considering it.

Over the years, mockingbird-induced insomnia has become my personal Blight of Spring, and it’s driven me to late-night extremes.

Clad in my old plaid bathrobe, I’ve dashed into the yard clapping my hands.

I’ve shot the garden hose full blast into the upper reaches of our tree, hoping to get relief from the “Chee chim charee! Fool’s in bed!” for at least the few hours until dawn. All I got was very wet.

I’ve run blinding flashlights around the yard and up into the tree branches. I’ve thrown rocks. I’ve hooted. I’ve encouraged our cats to face the enemy--an invitation sensibly declined, since one of them was nearly eviscerated by a dive-bombing mockingbird in broad daylight.

I have met with consistent failure, not to mention some odd looks from the neighbors.

Professionals have told me that my only choice is to buy earplugs. One exterminator said I might want to shoot a mothball-studded net into the tree with a bow and arrow, but I decided not to. I think he might have been from “Candid Camera.”

This year, I decided I’d try a more placid, Zen-like approach.

After all, the worst of the auditory battering lasts only a few weeks. And nobody else in my household seems to care. My daughter has slept through catastrophic earthquakes. My wife, an ordinarily kindhearted woman, offers little sympathy in this matter:

“Get over it,” she said last night, turning her back toward me. “It’s a bird.”

So I tried to get over it or, even better, get into it.

I lay perfectly still, closed my eyes, took great, deep, healing breaths, released them ever so slowly. Ahhhh.

“Boola-boola! Fool’s-in-bed!”

I imagined myself camping by a mountain stream, sleeping under an explosion of stars. The fire has dwindled, the water is lapping the banks, the air is fresh, and, at last, sleep has come.

“Do Wacka-doo! Wacka-doo! FOOL’S IN BED!”

I wasn’t bothered in the least. I was so at peace with myself and so at one with nature, that I calmly flung off the covers, serenely ran into the yard, ever so tolerantly grabbed an aluminum baseball bat, and whacked the tree until my hands stung.

The bird stopped, for a while.

Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is steve.chawkins@latimes.com.