THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 7, 1995 TAG: 9504050211
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
Help!
I'm being held captive by a man with a cough, a dog with an itch and a frenzied bird with a building permit and a loud-mouthed wife.
The man is my husband. For 37 years, we've shared sickness and health, good times and bad, bed and board.
All of that is about to change.
Especially the bed part.
I am not spending one more night like last Wednesday.
The man has a cough.
Not just your average run of the mill hack, but a cough so deep, so loud, so nerve wracking that rafters shake and windows rattle.
The cough is the end product of a bacterial sore throat combined with an allergy to all things green, growing and pollen producing.
Wednesday night was, hands down, the worst night of our married life.
Bill tossed, turned, hacked, gagged and gurgled. Between the hacks, gags and gurgles, he snored.
Loudly and with a rhythm, or lack thereof, designed to scare the life out of anyone who has seen those TV reports on sleep apnea.
When his breathing difficulties didn't keep me awake, the dog with the itch did. He started with short, light scratches that got longer and more intense as the night of my major discontent wore on.
Between fitful snores, hacks, gags and gurgles Bill would sit bolt upright and bellow ``Charlie, quit that scratching!''
I would come clear of the bed, yell at Bill for yelling at Charlie, then settle down and try to get a little sleep, a technique that worked - more or less - until the wad of hair that Charlie had inhaled from his scratching sessions lodged in his throat.
Then he joined Bill in hacking, gagging and gurgling, never stopping long enough to snore.
At first light, the bird took over.
On Sunday, Bill had hung a grapevine wreath trimmed with a miniature bluebird house and dried flowers on the front porch.
On Monday, a pair of small birds, the ones that look like sparrows who've fallen into a pot of raspberry jam, flew past the front window, did a U-turn and surveyed the wreath.
That there was not a for rent sign on it did not deter them at all.
Tuesday, they went to work.
He hauled twigs, straw and clumps of the hacking dog's discarded hair to the porch.
She screamed instructions in a voice that would do a Dublin fishmonger proud. When she wasn't harassing him, she was plucking dried flowers from the wreath to decorate her new living room.
Wednesday morning when Bill opened the door to pick up the newspaper, they served him with their version of an eviction notice.
``They don't want us on the porch,'' he said. ``They dive-bombed me when I tried to get the paper,'' he added as he checked the top of his head for scratches.
By daybreak the next morning, the one following the night of the hacks, gurgles and gags, they were hard at work again.
They were also into a battle worthy of that old comedy team, the Bickersons.
Their noise would have been bad enough on a regular morning. Coming, as it did, a half-hour before I was due to get up after a night of no sleep whatsoever it was more than I could take.
While Bill snored fitfully, I padded out to the front door with Charlie and gave the birds what-for for disturbing what little sleep I had managed to get.
They flew off, perched in a tree and yelled back at me.
Charlie hacked one last time and deposited a huge hair ball on the hall floor.
I scooped it up with a tissue, tossed it out and watched as the birds retrieved the whole disgusting mess and went to work breaking it down into parts they could use to line their nest.
Bill joined us in the front hall, complaining about his terrible night.
``You,'' I told him, ``are going to sleep in the guest room tonight.''
``And you,'' I told Charlie, ``are going with him.''
``And as for you,'' I shouted out the front door, ``I'm taking that wreath down and you're going to have to go somewhere else to raise your kids and fight.''
Then I went back to bed, pulled the covers over my head and got my best sleep of the night. All 15 minutes of it.
In the end, I didn't follow through with my threat. Instead, I extracted a promise from Bill that he'd take a hefty dose of cough syrup and use the vaporizer Thursday night. Then I slipped a double dose of antihistamine into Charlie's Snausage.
The birds, however, are another matter. I didn't have the heart to move their nest, so they're still out there bickering at daybreak and chasing us away from the porch the rest of the time.
If this is what spring brings, I'm ready to go back to dead of winter. by CNB