Am I a Hunter or Gatherer?

Ever since the dawn of humanity, or at least since the advent of the 1950's sitcom, men have been primarily responsible for hunting and providing for the family and women have been responsible for caring for the family. Often times in prehistoric civilizations, women were also responsible for farming and gathering berries and other assorted natural products from the wild. In The Birds, Melanie Daniels seems to have completely abandoned this role of caretaker. Instead, she preoccupies herself with hunting. After Mitch confronts Melanie in the bird shop, Melanie adopts the role of the huntress. She stalks her prey (Mitch) all the way up to Bodega Bay, where she intrudes on the local fishermen. Melanie rents out a boat to carry her across the bay and must go and pick it up at the docks. Once there, the fisherman surround her and eye her suspiciously. In her use of a boat, Melanie becomes like the fishermen who must take to the sea in order to snare their prey. After a brief sojourn across the bay, Melanie comes to the final showdown between her and her prey. In this scene, Melanie lies in wait for her prey to notice the trap she has left for him and emerge from the house. Camille Paglia draws a parallel, referenced in the shot above, between Melanie and a hunter: "Shell bag at the ready, she is the hunkered-down hunter, skulking in a duck blind, while the male is her prey.  Meanwhile, Mitch runs back and forth onshore after finding the birds in the house.  The recumbent Melanie could be aiming a shotgun at a zigzagging rabbit."[4] Although the roles are reversed when Mitch pulls out his binoculars, for a time, Melanie had firmly placed herself within the realm of masculinity.

The connection between Melanie and espionage, set up in the comparison between her and James Bond, is further developed in the aforementioned scene as well. Melanie is like a spy traversing the bay by boat to avoid being detected by her enemy on her way to plant a bomb within her enemy's base.[5] In Melanie's case, the bomb is the birdcage she plans to install within the Brenner household. When she approaches the dock, Melanie cuts the engine to enhance her stealth and moves quickly up the dock and towards the house once she lands. She rapidly enters the house once she is sure that the family is gone and checks around to make sure that there is indeed no one there. She then plants her bomb and rapidly leaves the house returning to the boat to watch and ensure that her plan was successful.