The Birds

3:15pm: Baby Avery is napping soundly. The dust bunnies are now growing legs and starting to hop around the house. It's taken me nearly 3 days, but I'm finally going to get around to vacuuming.

3:30pm: Merrily vacuuming the main floor, congratulating myself on this small accomplishment of house-wifery.



4:00pm. Moving a chair in order to vacuum the rug beneath it results in a wakeful baby. Foreseeing catastrophe if she doesn't nap for at least another 30 minutes, I sate the beast with breast milk.

4:15pm: Vacuuming resumes.

4:30pm: Sister calls. We chat as I vacuum. Her voice still has a slightly nails on a chalkboard quality from when she had laryngitis last week, but at least my eyes aren't watering every single time she utters a word.

4:45pm: I notice the two dead birds on my deck outside. My thoughts in order of occurrence: (1) *shudder* (2) Can I wait for Mark to get home and let him deal with that? YES! (3) I should take a picture and put this on my blog. (4) Don't do that. No one wants to see that.

Digression: Our house seems to be a bit of a bird Bermuda Triangle. We have a deck with glass panels beneath the railings, and birds sometimes get confused if they fly too low, resulting in their heads have an unfortunate encounter with the glass panels. We also have a cat that discovered her love of the outdoors (and the bounty of fresh food it provides) around the same time that we moved into our house and installed a doggy door three years ago. I feel bad about our urban bird terrorist, but she's almost 11, she only has a few years left anyway, right? My guess is that this incident was a result of the former. The latter is substantially bloodier.

5:00pm: Avery awakes. Diaper is changed. Songs are sung incredibly off-key.


5:15pm: Avery is placed in her play gym which is now a fixture of the living room rug. I call Mark to inform him that there are two dead birds on the deck and I need him to deal with them when he gets home.

For the non-parents, this is a play gym

5:18pm: The play gym enables me to bring in the non-perishable groceries that had spent the afternoon in my car. I bring in the first load, turn around from the kitchen to go get the second load, and see this:

The dead bird. You can thank me for not taking this close up.

5:20pm: There is one dead bird on my rug. Deposited approximately 5 feet from my child. Clearly, the dog has brought it in from the deck. Mercifully, it is still intact, and I don't have feathers flying everywhere (this option has happened before, it's not pretty). I decide that a picture and a blog post are now warranted.

5:21pm: I pick up the dead bird with a giant wad of paper towel and take it directly outside to the yard waste bin. Avery is still merrily cooing along to "Animal Fair."

5:22pm: Damnit, I have to go get the other bird off the deck before the dog drags in this other fine specimen.

5:23pm, out on the deck:

Thought: "Um, where the fuck is the second bird?"

Second thought: "Oh please God let the dog have just knocked it off the deck." Run to the railing, look over. No bird.

Third thought: "WHERE THE FUCK IS THE SECOND BIRD?"

It's now 8pm. I've thoroughly searched everywhere. I cannot find the bird. I know with reasonable certainty that it was not consumed by either the cat or the dog, or I would see feathers in evidence. That said, I am pretty sure that I'm going to run into it at some point, and it's going to scare the bejesus out of me.