I think this is the first time in my life I have experienced an actual spring. You know, where its rainy and chilly only some of the days, and the rest of the time its sunny and warm. March in Nashville may have seen a blizzard (three inches of snow that melted by noon), but it went out yesterday like a lamb frolicking on a sunny, 75-degree day.

But spring has sprung a little closer to home this year than I would have liked - my front door, to be specific.

Home Sweet Country Home

Last week I noticed a little brown sparrow-like bird spending a goodly amount of her time on our front porch. And sure enough, a closer look at the wreath on our door confirmed that she had made a teeny little nest there.

I suppose now is as good time as any to mention my utter and complete disgust-based fear of any and all birds. This phobia dates back to 1986, when my father me down in front of the TV and forced me to watch WTTW’s presentation of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” only a few delicate months after my traumatizing first-grade trip to Lamb’s Farm when I was accidentally left behind and locked in the turkey pen and those ugly gobbling bastards chased me in frantic circles and tried to peck my eyes out.

I loathe birds of any species. How anyone keeps these filthy flying rats in their house is completely beyond me. As far as I’m concerned, any and all fowl is, well, foul.

But from my five-foot-three vantage point that day, this little nest looked so perfect and intricate — like something Martha Stewart might have made as individual place-card holders for Easter dinner — that I didn’t have the heart to knock it down.

This brief lapse in judgment marked the beginning of the end of our use of the front door.

One weekend, during one of those rare moments when Rob was in our house and the sun was still up, I told him about the nest. He looked at me incredulously, and with just the slightest tilt of his head, I knew it was going to have to go.

We kill spiders in this house. And wreck birds’ homes.

Correction: I kill spiders in this house. Rob points them out and cowers in the corner, unscrupulously demanding their immediate squishing and flushing.

So it was I who dragged a garbage bag, a dustpan and a chair to the front door and opened it cautiously, sending our little winged disease-ridden friend flapping over to a nearby bush. But I had scarcely climbed up onto that chair when I spied something so repulsively wretched and fearful that I sucked in my breath in horror and flew to the ground, fumbling to slam the door.

EGGS.

The string of expletives that flew from my mouth are too profane to print. So I’ll water it down as they do here in Jesusland, where “cussing” is a great big sin.

“CHEESE and crackers! Rob! There’s a FUNK-load of eggs in there! … No, I can’t touch it now! Oh, SUGAR! … No way, do YOU want to touch that nasty thing? PHAROAH! Is that tinsel from our Christmas tree in there? Ew, is that a clump of Molly’s hair? … YES! I shake out the dust mop out there! What the fudge?!? Aw, DANG IT!!!”

And so we are relegated to entering and exiting our home exclusively through the garage. Which is fine, except when we have guests who are dive-bombed by the kamikaze mother bird when they ring the doorbell. Or when I forget and open the front door for that guest to leave, and the mother bird pokes her head out of the nest and she’s actually in our house at that point. Ick.

I just can’t wait until the eggs hatch. If one of those little nasty baby cork-soakers falls out and dies on my doormat, I am seriously going to puke.

Author’s note: No animals were harmed in the photographing of the nest, but it did take me six days to work up the courage to go out there with my camera, and I may or may not have worn sunglasses and protective gardening gloves, just in case.