*WARNING – repeated profanities throughout this post. Look away if you are offended by sweary birds. Or sweary words.

I don’t like birds. They terrify me. Everyone who knows me is aware of this because I bang on about it incessantly, even when people couldn’t care less (which, let’s be frank, is most of the time).

And yet, in the last few days, I have found myself absolutely captivated by birds. They are my new favourite things in all the world. Admittedly, the birds of my affection are drawings, so the risk of one of them flying into my eye is pretty slim. (A bird did actually fly into my eye once, because birds are terrible creatures. This was the beginning of my ornithophobia.)

Anyway, let me introduce you to Effin’ Birds….

You’re welcome.

After hours scrolling through the rather gorgeous drawings and laughing loudly, I believe that there is an Effin’ Birds sketch and comment for pretty much every moment in life. And many of them (obviously) are relevant to diabetes…

One for the diabetesplainers:

And another…:

One for Aunty Beryl who thinks you really should drink Okra water:

One for those who believe they know everything about diabetes after 10 mins on WebMD:

Oh, and this one for your well-meaning friend who thinks you should know EVERY TIME diabetes is mentioned anywhere:

‘Cinnamon. I heard it cures diabetes’:

One for daily life with diabetes:

And this one too…:

One for low carb-ers who believe they need to militantly hijack every single post that mentions foods with any carbohydrate:

Every time I see 5.5 on my meter:

To myself, when I see double arrows down on my Dexcom:

Walking out of many, many HCP appointments:

Talking to you, my pancreas:

This one to my CGM trace after a roller-coaster ride of a day:

This one to my phone when my CGM is alarming:I get it, not a bird… but yeah – this works:

Replace ‘voicemail’ with ‘fax’:

‘Ooh! Can I press this button on your pump?’:

Many of the sketches may not be relevant to diabetes, but that’s okay. They are still more than useful in my every day life:

You can follow Effin’ Birds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And if you are so inclined, support their crowd funding campaign. I have, mostly because I wanted a deck of cards to flash at people who annoy me.

This post is dedicated to my darling friend, Georgie, who is living her very best life all the way over in Paris at the moment. I know loves this as much as I do. Miss you, sweet-cheeks!