On Dive Bombing

You might already know what this term means or perhaps are curious to discover what this is. I myself stumbled upon it just a few days ago whilst I was watering the plants in my garden. Suddenly I heard this big whooshing sound and the next thing I noticed was a sparrow coming right at me from the oak tree in my back yard that it was perched on. I reacted in a hurry and raised the hose at it to protect myself and it just flew on by. This bird was protecting its territory from a predator or someone it thought was a predator. This act which I researched later after I came back inside the house is called “dive bombing”. What perplexed me was why was this bird feeling threatened by me, for all I was doing was watering my plants. I had no intention to harm the birds or disturb is habitat.

The bird and his companion had started to build a nest in our little “Shanghu Pushpam (Butterfly Pea)” bush earlier in the spring. It got frightened seeing us at the bush every morning plucking flowers. So he and his consort moved their nest to a hedge in my neighbors back yard. The family has flourished living there and I have noticed two tiny sparrows flying around in my yard along with the red tufted mother sparrow. The sparrow family has made it a home in our back yard and has marked its territory. Yes, even birds have their line of actual control (LAC). Just like the Chinese who have been swooping on territory around the world, these birds have claimed my yard as their home. We feel proud that our yard is attractive for this avian family.

Now it’s not just the birds that mark their territory in our yard. We have a plethora of lizards all over. Many of them make their home in the crevices in our brick wall. Interestingly they all mark their territories. There is a few sq ft or yards they claim as their own. You can see them snarl at their compadres if they see them intrude into their territory. It’s interesting to see that the concept of “LAC” is universal in some sense. Every living being wants to mark its territory or safe zone, it’s critical for finding food, shelter and habitation.

But let’s go back to this concept of “dive bombing” and see if we can relate it to our lives on our lonely planet. Does that too cut across species. Have you dive bombed or ever been dive bombed by your friends, your social circle, your co-workers. Maybe you have not put a name to this behavior. Many a time people feel that you are a threat to them with you being oblivious to the fact. We might feel the same too sometimes and resort to dive bombing.

I am reminded of an experience from my college days. It was a friends birthday and I concocted a plan to play a prank on him and enlisted the support of a few others in our coterie. We planned to buy a fake cake that looked real and catch him by surprise on his special day. In hindsight quite a nasty thing do. Everything went to plan except how my friend reacted to it. He took the knife to cut the cake and the cake collapsed into a flat sheet. We all thought it was funny and broke into guffaws. But he took it very badly and stunned us by leaving the party and subsequently stopped speaking to me. That unpleasant surprise we had planned was not something he had expected. Looking back now it appears that he was dive bombed that day. His ego got hurt so badly that he left. In this situation we were not threatened by him but our act seemed like a threat to him. It was an unforeseen attack.

Dive bombing is quite common in the workplace and affects our workplace relationships. Someone whom we thought was our friend and had bought in to our pitch suddenly goes on the offensive. It’s that critical Go-No Go meeting where you were hoping for their support when they turn on you. It’s possible that they didn’t like the fact that you were a rising star and wanted to bring you to reality.

Dive bombing has also become quite common on social media. In your comfortable coterie of friends or family things are amicable most of the time. One fine day you will find someone dive bombs you, out of the blue. You might wonder what you said or do, but will find no answers. Best way to handle dive bombing on social media is not to react at all. But that’s hard for most people. Just like I defended myself by turning the hose at the bird, most people respond in kind. Then it turns into a free for all.

There is a way to protect yourself and co habit. In our garden we carry an umbrella and go about our tasks and the poor sparrow seems to leave us be. We each need to find an umbrella or the cloak of honor (a little Harry Potteresque) , that would make us invisible to those who are threatened by us.