Photo: www.DanitaDelimont.com/Getty Images/Gallo Images

If you thought this would be your hottest summer yet, you’re wrong. It’s not a hot girl summer. It’s actually a cruel, violent bird summer, and the birds don’t even care. They’re too busy dive-bombing you while you’re out on a run working on your summer bod, or pecking at your naturally highlighted summer hair to care whether or not you even live through bikini season. Sorry, I don’t make the rules — the birds do.

The United States is currently experiencing an uptick in bird-on-human attacks, according to the Wall Street Journal, as humans have encroached more and more on natural bird habitats like marshes and wetlands. A man named Matt told the paper that he’s taken to jogging while flailing his arms over his head and wearing a hoodie near his home in Minnesota, to avoid a blackbird he calls “Nemesis.” Another describes being attacked by “avian scoundrels” while biking. A victim in Canada created a website called CrowTrax to tabulate crow violence in his area. “I’m yelling at him, and he’s yelling at me,” described a man who got into a “squawking match” with a red-winged blackbird. So, the birds have, in addition to scaring us, figured out how to make their human enemies look very, very stupid.

Although it’s normal for birds to get more territorial during certain times of year like nesting season, there isn’t a reason yet from the scientific community on why they decided en masse that this would be the summer that changed everything — except that, as an expert quoted by the Journal explains, their shrinking habitats are pushing them closer to the brink.

The birds want us out. They’ve had enough. Humans are the absolute worst, the world is ending and it’s our fault, and summer is when our narcissism and consumer addictions reach such totally untenable levels that the birds just said, that’s it, we’re going to kill you all. And they’re not totally wrong. I for one will be going down without a fight and I submit fully to my bird king, Nemesis.