I thought we had won

I thought we had won the war on the birds! The day we moved into our house, we noticed a little swallow nest full of cute little babies on our back porch. Well, being the nature lovers that we are, we decided to ignore the enormous poop pile and live in harmony with the family of birds... And then we decided to (gasp!) go outside. Apparently, mama birds don't like to share backyards. They even had my dogs flinching from the dive-bombs. We waited until the babies grew up (and stayed out all day) and then served them their eviction notice (a rubber snake in the nest). Then it was eviction day. Joey went out and tore down the nest. We live less than a mile from a farm with a TON of trees. No problem, right? Wrong!!! Within the next 24 hours, they rebuilt the nest! Joey once again, tore it down. Now we had, not one,... not two,... but SEVEN ticked off birds. Following the advice of the exterminator (For my Colorado friends, that is a person that comes to your house to put smelly stuff all over your yard to keep away the bugs.) we put out a few rubber snakes and bought a couple of powerful super soakers. The war began. We never went out without our super soaker. It was kind of touch and go for a little while, but eventually we were able to go out and enjoy our backyard.
Then they discovered that we have a really cool front porch. Out of respect for my neighbors and visitors, we did not move the rubber snakes to the front. But we do have the super soaker hanging just inside the front door. NOW I feel like I'm a true Texan.