The Bird

We have two little birds that spend each night sitting on the molding above the front porch. We think they might be Carolina Wrens. We try not to bother the birds at night and usually, once they are settled, we can go in and out the door and the birds will stay put. The birds do not nest on the house and there are no bird droppings by the front door, so we are happy to have these nightly visitors. However, Wednesday morning around 6:45am, there was an incident. Jeff opened the front door, to check to see if the newspaper had been delivered yet. He said later, that he felt something brush by him when the door was open. Now I usually do not get up until 7am, since the younger children don't start school until 8:30 (Alex starts class at 7:30, hence the early wake up for them). I was actually sound asleep Wednesday morning, when I bolted out of bed to the sound of horrified screaming from my eleven-year-old. Not an 'oh no something weird touched me' scream. Oh no, it was a non-stop 'I found my daddy crumpled at the bottom of the stairs' kind of scream, something you hope to never hear in your life time. I rushed out of the bedroom to grab and hold my hysterical daughter. Imagine my surprise (and relief, of course) to find that Jeff had not collapsed in a pool of blood. Oh no, it was just 'there's a bird in the house'! Luckily, the bird did not fly up to the top of our two story great room. It flew into the kitchen. Finding the small bird in the kitchen was a little difficult, but Jeff managed to find it behind the coffee grinder. He netted the bird and we managed to scoop it out of the house onto the back porch in relatively short order. It took a bit longer to calm Alex down. But she and Jeff left a few minutes later, and Alex had a big story for her friends in car pool. The good news, the bird was not scarred for life, as it reappeared on the porch that evening.

Not the best picture - I took the photo through the screen as I didn't want to chase off the birds right as they settled down for the night.