One of my few wise friends lectured me one time on a topic called ‘behavioural trends of birds’ and I remember him talking about "when you want a bird to covet something, make it mysterious- they cherish surprises, even when such ‘surprises’ are anything but surprises. 

He told me that if you want to give a bird a gift, wrap it up nicely and give it to her as a ‘surprise’ because she will genuinely be excited, even if the actual gift is less expensive than the material used to wrap it.

To explain his point further, he told me that if you go shopping with a bird, don’t just buy something for her from the shelves and give it directly to her because she will not appreciate it.

Rather, although she will already know that you bought something for her and will be in the know of what exactly the item is, take it home and wrap it up and present it to her in wrapping.

He told me she will go like "Oh My God! What is this you bought for me? Ohhh how sweet darling, you are sooooo sweet! "

And voila!  You will be the man for a couple of days until of course the excitement begins to melt down. But if you present the gift just like that without any kind of drama, your moment of glory is likely to last until the shopping is over.

The same ‘surprise science’ works in other scenarios and that is why it is often difficult for hunters to succeed in their own environments, say, work place or class. 

Very few hunters have been able to successfully browse in their backyard –apart from a few masters of surprise attacks like me.

A guy once told me that if you want to conquer birds in your environment, to wage a conventional war – guerilla warfare is more favourable here. 

I find a lot of truth in this when I reflect back during my days in primary school when I had a terrible crash on a nice bird who was in the same class as I was.

She seemed to be interested in me because she would always try to near where I was during break time and when I was answering questions in class, she would almost twist her neck since she was sitting in the front row, trying to follow my answer. 

But then, as I tried to play stunts that would make me hero so that I could endear myself even more to her, I would end up screwing up and land in trouble with the headmaster or teachers.

This would result in punishments which included being made to kneel before the class or canning. This would seriously puncture my confidence and self esteem and I would try as much as possible to stay away from the bird for some time until such a time when I thought that the incident had been forgotten.

Before long I would become funny again and another round of punishments would be meted out on me – this went on and on until we finished school and joined different secondary schools; I went to a boy’s high school.

I recently met the bird who is now married and no longer as attractive and we cracked our ribs discussing the past, where she actually admitted that she had a crash on me then and that I spoilt things for myself by avoiding her. I wish I had known.

Years later, I want to confront this natural hunting phenomenon head on and see how far I can go, using the surprise attack tactic. I have been told that there is no other way out apart from acting mysteriously.

They say that when you act predictable or ordinary, you risk becoming ‘just another guy at the work place’ and will definitely be treated as such.

In such situations, birds might even end up treating you like one of them- God Forbid! And even discuss their romantic escapades in your presence. In a nutshell, they will consider you ‘harmless’, if not sexless!  That is why you need to avoid the ‘ordinary guy’ tag and try to be the guy-that-they-don’t-know.

This way, some will try to find out who you really are and end up falling in your trap.

One thing led to another and I found myself spending the whole day in a bird nest as my new work place environment. I had never been in such a situation, and what’s even funnier about the situation is the fact that some of the birds know me quite well, having been my victims in one way or another, if you know what I am saying.

The good thing is that none of them would dare to reveal anything because they fear ramifications which include being branded naïve and immature by their peers. So, now, I would like to prey on the ‘unexplored’ group but how to do this?

This where the ‘operating in mysterious ways’ comes in. I don’t want to become too familiar to the extent that the birds know how much I earn, which school I went to, where I live, where I hang out after work, my likes and dislikes, etc, etc.

T avoid being glued at the office all the time, I will be using my laptop and modem so that I can do my work off station most of the time.

Once in office, I will pretend to be very busy and will only afford a ‘hi’ to the birds and nothing more. When they start to gossip, I will pretend that I don’t even know what they are talking about and I don’t even care.

I understand that this way, some of the birds will try to find out what I am really made of and in their endeavors, the trap will snap – pap! And one or two of them will fall. Wish me luck. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2011.

Ends