Breakfast

The crows around here have an appetite for clams. They pick them up and smash them against any hard surfaces they can find, so you find bits of shells littering parking lots, rooves, sidewalks and peoples' balconies.

The gulls try this sometimes too, but it's mostly the crows.

One of them likes to tap them against my bathroom vent, which to my groggy half-asleep morning ears sounds like someone is rapping on my door with a key. I launch myself out of bed in a panic to find some clothes to put on to answer it and always find that there's no one at the door.

No, it's just the horrifically violent death of a bivalve mollusc on my roof.

Or breakfast. Whatever you want to call it.

Either way it does get me out of bed in the morning. It works almost as well as the cat tries to shove something up my nose.