Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Dominion over animals. It’s a God-given right. Recently, however, my house seems to be void of this right, and nature has been running wild, ignoring the natural order of things.

One day, I walked upstairs and heard something violently flapping. A bird was flying around the living room, obviously a little lost. Can I direct you somewhere else? A tree? A high wire? Anywhere but my living room? Because, man, for some reason birds are absolutely terrifying indoors.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never gotten an especially gruesome scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds out of my head. And how’d he even get in my living room? I had no idea. All I knew was that he needed to go, so as he landed on a window blind, I strategically creeped up to the door, swung it wide open and clapped at him. And he flew out of there. Bird-0, Marissa-1, and it was only 8 a.m.

An hour passed. I left the room.

When I came back a few minutes later, there was another one casually flying around like he owned the place. I was afraid and angry, but mostly afraid because this second bird did not exit the building as easily as the first. He ignored the doors I flung open for him and decided to roost behind the microwave.

I experienced a combination of fight and flight that was pretty ineffective. I settled on throwing things lying around me and then hiding under a blanket. But he would not leave the microwave. I gathered my courage, grabbed a broom and poked in his general direction. He flew somewhere, but I couldn’t tell where because I was under the blanket. We never knew whether he flew outside or to another hiding spot. It’s possible he could be still in here today.

More recently, our house has been suffering from the worst of all plagues – fruit flies, incredible amounts of fruit flies.

My roommate and I had enough one night. We chose our weapons – towels and 409 spray – and attacked. Our strategy killed the flies all right, but consequently killed our brain cells as the 409 filled the room.

We decided to wage a more patient, kind of war after that and set up fruit fly traps of mason jars filled with apple vinegar. And it’s working. They’re almost all gone.

With our chimney boarded up and fruit forever banned, our dominion over nature will return, and our house will be our own once again.