This morning a bird got in. I’m not sure how it got in. I had let the dogs out and set about loading the dishwasher. Then I heard Artemis crying to come in, so I opened the door but she didn’t come in. As soon as I went back to the dishwasher, I heard her again. I called to her that she would have to wait, under the fool me once rule. But then Cobie came and bumped the door open. I didn’t leap up to close it again, although I should have. The air conditioning was already running. It turned ugly hot a few days ago, kind of sudden, after a long cool summer so far.
After I finished loading the dishwasher, started it, made my coffee, and took my empty-stomach pills, I went to close the door, and that’s when something really large started flapping around the lamp just above my head. I startled hard, because I thought it was a bat. Then I saw it was only a bird. I closed the door. I decided a bird could wait. Like, until Mr Moth woke up. I had not had coffee yet, for god’s sake. I wasn’t even wearing pants yet.
Nobody should attend a wildlife rodeo without pants.
So I came to The Keep. I gave out morning treats. I opened my laptop without drama, a welcome change of pace since it’s been squirreling around lately. I started to play Pearl’s Peril, which is what passes for morning meditation with me. I heard a bunch of yapping, woofing, and meowing from the kitchen. I wondered if it would wake up Mr Moth. I felt no particular compunction to make sure it didn’t. Then everything went silent. The dogs came back to The Keep and lay down. This did not bode well for the feathered one.
Cry havoc and let slip the ckatten… Here came Artemis the ckatten. She leapt and twisted and stampeded up and down my shelves and across my desk. I looked up, and there was the bird. I’m not sure what kind. It looked kind of hawklike, but regular bird sized. I stood up and ushered out the dogs. I tried to usher the ckatten, but forget that. She had more havoc to wreak. So I snagged her and ejected her forcefully. She twisted in midair and I slammed the door in her face. She sat there yowling. I can’t believe Mr Moth slept through that, given the proximity and all.
Okay, bird. I get that (a) there is a reason for the term “bird brain,” and (2) fear doesn’t make anyone smarter even if they have a magnificent brain to start with. But fly out already!
It is not too surprising I was outfoxed by a dumb bird. It might not have been in the house in the first place if I had not been outfoxed by the ckatten so thoroughly and often that I gave up trying to keep her indoors.
Anyway, once upon a time I owned two finches. When one would escape, I sometimes captured it by throwing a towel over it. But The Keep is towel-less, as I failed at the Hitchhiker’s Guide. Especially since the only things I remember about that book is the number 42 is important, and something about keeping a towel handy, which I obviously have not done. I don’t know what, if anything, the Guide might say about being trapped in a Keep, besieged by predatorial pets, with a dumb bird. So I had to use my head. Before coffee. Not cool. After a few minutes of chasing the poor dumb bird around with a yard stick, I had an idea.
Since I wasn’t wearing pants, never mind a skirt–I only own two skirts, one I only ever wore to Porfolio Review and the other I have never worn–I decided I would do what heroes always do when bandages are needed. Who knows, maybe a hero would also do this if trapped in a Keep with a dumb bird and no towel.
I took off my shirt. I figured I could use it as a towel, net, dumb bird-catcher. Not that I wanted to, because it’s white and hasn’t any stains on it yet, and I really didn’t want it crapped on. But sometimes sacrifices have to be made. As I finished pulling my shirt over my head, I caught my last glimpse of the dumb bird, streaking out the window and away as though it had caught a glimpse of hell’s depths.
I think I have a complex now. Take off my shirt, terrorize a bird.
I hope you have an idea today, and that it doesn’t result in you needing body image therapy.