Monday, April 21, 2008

no fly zone

It was 5:45 this morning when M came into the bedroom with the news.

"I'm pretty sure there's a bird in the backyard. I could barely get Otis to come in. I think it's still alive, but it's dark, and I can't find it."

Awesome. Really, really awesome. Happy Monday. What is the deal? Is all of our green-ness luring birds to us to die? I mean, are they all flying around in the sky, thinking, "the P family doesn't use chemicals on their lawn, I want to go on to seriously greener pastures??" Why are none of you reassuring me that there are dead birds in your yards half a dozen times a year? I very sincerely doubt that Otis is such a stealth hunter that he's actually snagging all these poor things.

Just the same, at 6:30, I was outside, traipsing around in the cold, wet grass looking for a possibly still-alive bird. And I found it. Of course I found it. It wouldn't be my life if I hadn't found it. So, it was still breathing, though it was no longer flailing about, so Ouiser the farm girl had to make a reappearance. Luckily, I had a shovel handy this time to smack it with. (Gross, I know.) Then I bagged the sucker up and threw it in the garbage. All in all, it was about a four minute gig. I'm getting a smidge too efficient at this. It's alarming.

Beyond the apparent avian flu that hovers over our family, things are going well here. We're still working on getting settled in, but it's getting better. S is loving the warm weather. Loving it. She wants to be outside every second that she's awake. We bought her a sand table, which we finally filled yesterday, and she loved it...though she did eat a lot of sand. She thinks that shovels are spoons, and I think she was really, really confused. It was fun, though. And much to M's chagrin, she has decided that it's super fun to blow dandelions.

Okay, she's waking up. I'm out, peeps.

4 comments:

Sarah Berry said...

Very happy to have you back in the land of blog-world. Sorry about the super icky bird experience though :(

Kristie said...

I can't count the number of little birdies that have been victim to my car! I don't run into them, they run into me! It is kind of freaky!

feather nester said...

You're my hero. I had to kill what I think was either a hornet or a wasp or something the other day. Something huge with a huge stinger. Anyway, I was hyperventilating. That may have more to do with the fact that all insects with stingers hunted me like a dog throughout my childhood leaving me with a wee phobia of all things stingy. The point is, I'm so impressed.

die Frau said...

I'm also impressed. I think Penny, as a terrier and a puppy, would try to eat it, so I feel grateful that no birdies have chosen our yard as a final gasping place...yet.

When I lived in VA the starlings would fly directly over our school on their way south--literally hundreds. Very Hitchcock. The worst was that they ate some berry that made them poop purple, and you could NEVER get it off your car!