Summers in the mountains are more than idyllic.

Bugs? There are almost none.

Humidity? I’m a teenager and have never sweated.

Temperatures? Perfect.

There is, however, a small, feathered menace that visits our house most springtimes and this year has been no exception. The American woodpecker.

These aren’t the cute, occasional tappers you picture when you think about woodpeckers like those in a Disney cartoon. Our local woodpeckers imagine the exterior of our house as some sort of giant rectangular drum with living occupants that like their music. They even have some internal metronome set to the most inconvenient hours of the morning before I’m even awake.

My family, eager for some peace and quiet, plunged headfirst into the internet’s treasure trove of woodpecker deterrents. Shiny CDs hanging like strange outdoor decorations that bejewel our aspen trees. A plastic owl is currently sitting precariously (and at an odd angle) on the roof like he lost his internal sense of balance. And when we get really annoyed, we loop digitized hawk screeches on a Spotify loop through the crisp mountain air, much to the annoyance of our house cat.

And the result of this arsenal of ideas? Utter failure.

The CDs have been on our trees so long they have lost their shimmer, much like the songs they originally contained. The owl is treated more like an inanimate friend to our woodpeckers rather than the ferocious beast the “3.9 Amazon stars” promised us at the time of the owl’s procurement. And the hawk calls are now just a new bird language the woodpeckers have come to love.

During my now sleepless morning hours I have had time to contemplate on the more meaningful aspects of sharing space with these birds. It makes me wonder what goes on in their little hardworking brains. Are they deliberately targeting the parts of our home that make the most noise? Do they gather in the forest and share notes on the best drumming spots? Is this some kind of feathered rebellion against humankind?

Humans write symphonies, launch rockets and edit genes, yet we continue to lose territorial dispute to a creature with no hands and no plan. The universe must be howling with laughter. Or maybe, like the woodpecker, it just keeps tapping, indifferent and amused by our faith in solutions.

The woodpeckers know they are winning. They don’t build empires. They just chip away at them. One peck at a time.

Ruth Wiseman is a Woodland Park native and a dual-enrolled high school student attending Pikes Peak State College.