“Okay, who is on my roof with a jackhammer? Or maybe spraying my house with a machine gun?”
That’s what I wondered recently when an afternoon nap was interrupted by a loud, fast and persistent rat-a-tat noise coming from my roof.
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, pause. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, pause.
After about the fourth stanza, I went outside to investigate. As I opened the front door, the ruckus stopped, but when I parked myself back on the couch, the rat-a-tatting started up again. Over and over this routine was repeated. I felt like I was stuck in a cartoon.
The commotion cranked up again the next day, but this time I was stealthy enough to spot a woodpecker fleeing the scene. Ah, ha! That rascal was pecking on our gutters.
And that’s what he does every day, this lowdown gutterpecker.
We live on nearly five acres packed with tasty, succulent trees full of all the stuff God intended for woodpeckers to eat. What kind of self-respecting woodpecker would fly by those and choose instead to peck on aluminum gutters?
My new nemesis occasionally dines at our birdfeeders, too, which is totally okay. We’re glad to see him at our birdie buffet — he’s really quite pretty with his red head and black stripes. But why did he decide our gutters are part of the smorgasbord? There isn’t any gourmet chocolate up there, which is the only thing I can think of that might be worth pecking a gutter for.
I suspect that perhaps he has a case of woodpecker pica.
Pica is an actual human disease which is defined as “the persistent eating of nonnutritive substances for at least one month.” We’re not talking Big Macs and Twinkies here. I read that individuals diagnosed with pica have been reported to consume clay, dirt, sand, stones, pebbles, hair, feces, lead, laundry starch, vinyl gloves, plastic, pencil erasers, fingernails, paper, paint chips, coal, chalk, wood, plaster, light bulbs, needles, string, cigarette butts and ashes, wire, burnt matches, wax, paint, buttons, and soap.
Yuck.
Some forms of pica are common enough to warrant their own medical names. Here are a few: xylophagia–eating wooden toothpicks; coniophagia–eating dust; geophagia–eating clay or dirt; amylophagia–eating laundry starch and paste; trichophagia–eating hair.
Let me say it again: Yuck.
I read that in 1985, a man had 212 objects removed from his stomach, including 53 toothbrushes, two razors, two telescopic antennas, and 150 handles of disposable razors.
Pretty crazy, huh? Crazy, but true. People actually have pica, and so does at least one woodpecker who has apparently acquired a taste for aluminum. While most of us can’t relate to this physical affliction, I’m guessing that probably all of us have a touch of spiritual and emotional pica.
We’re all trying to scratch up enough love, acceptance, fulfillment, security and peace to get us through this life, and sometimes we look in the wrong places to find something –anything–to fill our hungry hearts.
We go pecking around in the gutters of this world when God is shouting for us to come to Him and discover what it means to be truly fed and satisfied. All the good stuff is found in Jesus. No use looking in the gutters when there’s a feeder full of satisfaction right around the corner, just a prayer away.
“The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food in due time…. The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him; He will also hear their cry and will save them.”– Psalm 145:15, 18-19