For the birds

So I get out of a meeting the other day and head back to my office. There, on my keyboard, is a note: “Call your wife – there’s a bird in the house!”
I then noticed I had a text message on my phone: It read “There is a bird in the house! HELP!!!!!!!”
Have you gotten the idea that my wife is less than fond of birds?
I called her, and, taking breaks between laughs, I asked her what the bird status was.
“I have no clue. I left.”
She did not see the humor in the situation that I did. And partly, I think, she was a little miffed at me for having allowed the bird invasion to begin.
It started a few months ago, when a wren began building a nest in our garage.
When the first few pieces of pine straw came in through a cracked window, my wife suggested I close the window and redirect the nest construction project.
I responded by saying, “Look, kids – a bird is making a nest in the garage!!!”
Needless to say, you can’t really stop the nest process once interested kids are involved. Not exactly fair play on my part.
And then about a week ago, we heard the tiny little chirps of baby birds.
The kids were excited that they were going to get to see them leave the nest, and my wife was excited that she was not going to have birds swooping in and out of the garage every time she went to her van.
At that point, our birds showed an uncanny knack for survival.
When they left the nest, there were two ways they could leave the garage: Through the window at the back of the garage, or through the garage door.
Simply hopping out of the garage door seems the easiest, most direct route.
It’s also the quickest path to an army of neighborhood cats that had begun circling my garage.
So the window was the survivor’s approach. Only problem – the window was rather high for baby birds.
It was going to take a few days of learning to fly before they were able to get up there.
So they took dominion over our garage.
The adults were swooping in and out of the window, I assume trying to teach the little ones how to fly, how to not get eaten by a cat, etc.
And this is where I am guessing the security breach occurred.
As best I can tell, someone left the door from the kitchen to the garage ajar, and one of the adults, tired of swooping out the window, decided to investigate. In doing so, the tiny, harmless wren created an evacuation normally reserved for hazardous chemical spills.
In short order, I had arrived to save the day.
My son was eager to assist me. My daughter? She was fine staying back with Mom.
We entered the house slowly, mainly because I was still stopping every two steps to double over laughing.
When we entered the house, I saw the bird flitting about in our sunroom.
Parker and I planned our strategy, and it was one of the more complex in the history of such missions.
It involved:
1. Go to sunroom
2. Open door
3. Watch bird fly out
And there you go. Practically Navy SEAL stuff, huh?
My wife reluctantly admitted that she PROBABLY could have handled that task, and that a wren was probably not going to take her down.
Eventually, the baby birds did learn how to get up to the open window, and all of the birds have vacated the garage, which means there is just one thing left to do: Shut that window.