You'd Never Know It From the Updates. . .

but there is truly never a dull moment at the Giffords household.

Picture if you will. . . I work from home and am on a conference call this morning when I hear the pet door flap open behind me. I hear an ungodly whistling sound and, out of the corner of my eye, spy a flash of white with something small and black in his mouth.

I did not know that moles whistle while being toyed with.

Further surprise -- it's not a mole.

2 seconds after this revelation, I have to tell the folks on call that my cat has caught. . . wait for it. . . a BIRD ! gah. He is very small, has black wings & head, and is in a very precarious position in the universe.

I see Scooter fly through the kitchen, sneaking peeks at me to see if I am following him. He gets to the landing on the staircase, giving me about five seconds to try and catch him. I snag him on the landing but only because the little bird is now putting up a fight. Scooter drops him and I snatch him up. Scooter, not the bird. Ohhh, but I didn't even know he KNEW those cat words. . .they were scorchers.

I run up the remaining stairs and fling (carefully) Scooter into our bedroom so that I have a closed door between him & Cheepster. Did I mention that I am still on the call ? Oh, yeah. Thank God I'm female and have quadraphonic ears. (Yes, I can hear my husband laughing right now.)

I run back down the stairs to find Cheepster. No bird. No bird ANYWHERE.

Lord Almighty -- where is the dang bird now ?

I still hear thumping, scratching, and angry MEows from upstairs so I know that I do not dare allow Scooter out until that bird shows up.

I am running around downstairs looking for the bird because I know that as I was pounding down the stairs I did not meet a small bird coming up.

I circle rapidly around my living room and come back to my desk, but I know that I still have a) a very angry cat upstairs and b) a uranium-level unstable bird somewhere in my house.

I finish up my call and realize that I have spotted the bird ! He is squashed down near the opening to our downstairs bathroom. He is hiding. I do not blame him. =P

Now, I have to figure out how I, a lithe minx after all, am going to manage to capture a very small, very FAST little bird. Without injury. To me. Yeah, yeah -- OR the bird. Such an animal lover am I.

I grab a couple of paper towels because THAT is the preferred bird-catcher equipment for professionals -- or something -- and I advance on Cheepster. I swoop down and I. Catch. Him.

I wrap him up in the paper towels very carefully and he snuggles down like it's a nest. Whut ?

Now, I have some more options -- I have to find a place to contain him because I still have some work to do. I plan to let him out at noon and that's about an hour & a half from now. I can't let him out right now because his left wing is cattywhompus and I don't know if he can fly. If he cannot fly, I might as well advertise him as a scooby snack when I set him free. Being me, I find a large empty cereal box and gently slide the paper towel nest inside. Also being me, I realize that -- duh -- no way to keep the bird INSIDE this lovely little box. Grr. Back to the drawing board.

Or. . .the garage ! We have a bunch of pet carriers ! Aha ! Yep, the bird got to spend some time behind bars. In the scariest prison known to ma. . . err. . . cat. And he seemed to love it. He was very quiet and very still for almost an hour. Of course, Scooter was in and out of the house, so maybe Cheepster was just exercising his God-given right of self-preservation.

About ten minutes before noon, which I like to call "breakout time", Scooter finally figured out that SOMETHING was in that scary box. The bird made a near-fatal error of moving around and making a weird scratchy noise on the cereal box. Scooter immediately went on point and jumped up on the counter to reclaim his "toy". After 5 minutes of playing the "get off my counter" game with Scooter, he gave up and huffed outside because his Momma was being sooo mean to him by not letting him dig around in that secret box with the interesting noises.

Noon ! I suit up and take everything outside. I have decided to place Cheepster in his paper towel nest up high in our holly bush. I figure that's relatively safe and, if he does have a wing problem, he'll be far enough up that that I can go check on him later without having to worry about his snack status. I place the carrier on the ground and wiggle the cereal box out. As I am bringing the box up to the holly bush, pRRRRRRRRRRT ! Cheepster is OUTTA THERE !





I'm happy that he's okay and ecstatic that he was not a Scooter snack, but jeez. . . did he have to get so close to my eyes on the way out ? I was a'-HAYLPin' him ! =P

Thoughts ?





P.S. Happy birthday, Daddy.

UPDATE: Scooter brought me another present this afternoon. Unfortunately, this one was a great deal more fragile. Let's just say. . . Cheepster = toy. Hummingbird = attempted snack. Very sad day in the Giffords household. I am sad that I was unable to release the hummingbird with the same success as Cheepster. Scooter is very sad that Momma is so mean that she took his prize away from him without even so much as a "sorry".