last night we had an unexpected visitor, and, no, it wasn't bambi.
as my son went opened the door to take out a diaper, a sparrow flew into the house. it was all a matter of timing. he opened the door and, whoosh, in came the bird, freaking out kids and surprising adults. i mean, really, who expects a bird to fly in through the door?
and, for the record, a house with four cats is so not a good place for a bird. that sparrow is damn lucky the noise freaked out logan so he hid, the kitten was already in hiding, and ororo was sleeping upstairs. which, of course, leaves vagner, and, damn, i've never seen him move that fast. ever. in fact, he's gained enough weight to earn himself the nickname fatboy from the oldest. but he was on top of that sparrow when he saw it, even caught it once. then saxy bopped him with something and the bird flew into the office. we caught vagner first and locked him up upstairs (an action for which he's only just now forgiving us for).
and then we spent at least an hour and half trying to get that damn bird out of the house. we opened up all the doors and a window without a screen. but instead of heading for fresh air, the bird kept flying back and forth between the living room and my office. at one point it even ending up behind my makeshift bookshelves. since the shelves were too close to the wall for it to spread its wings enough to fly back out from behind them, saxy had to move a bunch of stuff from in front of the shelves, more stuff from the top of the shelves, then remove the screws that were holding them together before he could get back and there and get the bird out.
and it still didn't leave the house.
three adults, one with one of those dusters for high ceilings, could not get this bird out of the house. my only comfort was that at least the bird was flying despite being nabbed by my cat. when it finally did leave (through the front door, naturally), i honestly don't think any of us had anything to do with it. i suspect it was more of a "get me out of this crazy place!" kind of thing.
i think, though, should we ever get a bird in the house again (god forbid!), the first thing we need to do is take all the knickknacks and things it can perch on off the walls. this doesn't help in the case of the fireplace with its natural stone (and where it was actually quite difficult to see the bird), and the dragon above my desk might be a bit difficult to remove...and the stuffed animals on the shelves and such might take more time than just trying to get the bird out of the house.
on second thought, let's just hope we aren't visited by any more sparrows or birds of any other kind any time soon.
