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“I just know it is coming into the house,” she said.

“You know it will fly into the house and you won’t get it out,” she told me.

But I didn’t listen.

We’ve got a little bird, probably a swallow, that has decided to nest in the little potted palm tree just outside our front door. My wife tried warning me several times that I needed to move it. Did I listen? What do you think…?

Of course I didn’t listen.

I thought that given the placement of the nest, right outside the side window pane, the kids would have a great view of nature in action. Then, Sunday morning she spotted four little speckled eggs in the nest. How cute! How darling!

Sometimes, life gives you a little foreshadowing. It might have been earlier tonight, when I read that Winnie-the-Pooh story to the kids that they never seem to want… the one where Rabbit and Pooh and Piglet plan to kidnap Roo, on account of not knowing what shorts of creatures Kangas and Roos are. There is this one passage:

“There’s just one thing,” said Piglet, fidgeting a bit. “I was talking to Christopher Robin, and he said that a Kanga was Generally Regarded as One of the Fiercer Animals. I am not frightened of Fierce Animals in the ordinary way, but it is well known that, if one of the Fiercer Animals is Deprived of Its Young, it becomes as fierce as Two of the Fiercer Animals…”

Or maybe just as protective of its unborn.

Tonight, I set out to put the garbage out at the street, which is the Monday night tradition. And as the door started to close behind me, the ruffled flapping sound told me all I needed to know. The scream that followed confirmed it. The bird was in the house.

What I failed to predict is how quickly my wife would slam all of the bedroom doors, and sequester herself and the kids to safety. (Ryan, to his credit, slept through the whole thing. I think Laura had to be harshly threatened to stay in her room.) Apparently, my wife’s self-preservation genome kicked into action, and I suddenly thrust into that moment of clarity where I knew my place in the universe… in the living room, until the bird was either outside or dead. (just kidding)

It took a little while to figure out how to see my bride again without earning the eternal ire of the tree-huggers (who would be better served encouraging birds to find larger trees than the tiny palm-in-a-pot we’ve got.) I pulled the staff from my grandmother’s antique churn, knowing full well that the low end had not been handled by humans in a long, long time. (Critical step, as the taint of humanity causes birds to reject each other.)

At this point, with the bird slamming itself silly against my ceiling, and drifting from the living room to the kitchen and back, it occurred to me that we’d have been better off with a bat in the house. Not a baseball bat – I had my stick of choice – but a flying-mammal kids-dreaming-of-vampires bat. After all, my family’s reaction would have been no different, and with a bat, the powers of echo-location would have made it unnecessary to keep the flying pest from flying into the blades of my ceiling fan.

Mama landed with a thud in between our oak secretary and the side of the lower cabinets. I proffered the end of the stick, and a free ride to freedom. No dice. I then gently prodded until Mama Bird took flight – straight for the ceiling fan. I waved my staff gently, and eased the avian invader back on a flight path to the kitchen. This time, she firmly wedged herself on the ground, in the crack between the wall and the refrigerator.

This time, I used the staff to try and ease the bird into the lip of the plastic garbage can I had just emptied. A couple of gentle taps, and she hopped right on board. And three steps later, she took flight yet again. This time, she landed gracefully on a stack of coupons, leaning diagonally in a basket. I’m not so sure how that KFC coupon had enough tensile strength to support her weight, and it bowed in a couple of times. She was concentrating on staying on board, and I was able to offer a sturdier stick… which she obligingly accepted.

Now, the march to the door. Slow and agonizing. I called my wife to open the door, and she slipped in like a Ninja with her face covered like a Geisha. She was treating this with the reverence of a PeTA protestor in a Burka, which is how the Mullahs like their naked protesters dressed. (And before you freak out, she was in fact clothed.) She opened the door, and I pointed the end of the stick at the lip of the Palm Pot. Mama bird took a little hop, and flew to freedom.

Mission Accomplished.

Unless I get attacked in the morning.

(I know I hit a posting lull. Business has been busy, and I have most of a long post finished. This was just too good to pass up.)

[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, family, birds, motherhood[/tags]