Bird is the word

Brandt in his "birdiest" outfit

Actually, bird was the whole *sentence* today. After half an hour of Crazy Bettie freaking out and barking at the door this afternoon, I finally looked out the peep hole to see a couple neighborhood kids screwing around. OK, the kids were just standing on the sidewalk, but everyone knows neighborhood teenagers are always up to no good. So I threw the door open to put an end to their evildoing.

Turns out they were trying to figure out what to do about some orphaned baby birds and when I opened the door they all ran in! (The birds, not the kids--I tried my best to lure the kids in to help wrangle birds, but only got five minutes of help from one of 'em). I sequested Bettie in the bathroom, Lyle in Dan's office, and Brandt in his swing and set about tearing up the house.

Bye bye birdies

Two of the five birds (the kids counted five outside, anyhow) and I chased each other around the living room for a while. I was scared to touch them and they didn't want to hop in the box on their own so I gave up and retreated to the bedroom to look for the rest of the flock. After tearing up the bedroom I was reasonably sure there was nowhere for a half-inch-long baby bird to hide and closed the door to keep it birdless. When I got back to the living room the count was up to three baby birds and I got serious about wrangling. I caught the first one in Dan's shoe and the next two in a small box. Phew! I checked all over the house for the other two with no luck, but before long, the chirps from the three in the big box lured out the fourth. I figure he must have been hiding in Dan's other shoe all along because I looked EVERYWHERE! The fifth bird never materialized so I'm fairly sure he never came in the house.

I learned from the Wild Wing Project Web site that the birdies should be fine on their own so when Dan got home a few minutes later we took them outside. We poured them out of the box and into the neighbor's hedge (aimed away from our door). A mama bird was hanging out in a driveway across the street chirping away, but didn't come over in the short time we were outside. She was probably hoping we'd babysit a bit longer.

Now I look at the house with new eyes: "Where could baby birds hide?" I guess it's a good first step in childproofing.