Friday: 72 degrees and sunshine.

Saturday: 30 degrees and blizzard.

Monday: 65 degrees and glorious sunshine.

Oklahoma is weird.

I’m kinda surprised my succulents have survived the winter and all our snow. Shows how much I know about gardening. Zilch.

The snow is nearly almost melted now and so we took the opportunity after having the pukies & poops all weekend to go do something fun. We have a window into our garage, and when Jude and I came back from running around, I noticed a big bird flapping around in the window. In the garage. I pointed it out to Jude and he looked really vexed. “Hold this bird,” he said in his faltering Jude-speak.

Uh oh. Luckily, that bird flew on out once I opened the garage door so I didn’t have to go shooing it out of there with a broom. Trust me, it wouldn’t be the first time in our family. Someday I’ll have to recount the story of Simon rescuing me when we were in college from a wounded, bleeding bird who bled and pooped all over my apartment one long day while I was out.

Anyway, it’s a glorious day so while Jude napped, I was snapping pictures of things that I wanted to blog about and cleaning up the enormous mess that is our house, and I had the back doors open, airing out the house. We have two backdoors in our open living room/kitchen because at one point, they were actually two separate rooms, walled off from each other. While I was in and out, I noticed the same bird that was in the garage, perched on the ledge, watching me through the glass in the kitchen. Weird.

Here it is. The perpetrator.

Then, about an hour later, the bird actually worked up the nerve to hop in the door and take a perusal of our kitchen and living room. In a way it was kind of sweet. In a Snow White/Cinderella/birds-as-cute-helpers and not as harbingers of disease and indiscriminate poopers. Uh oh. Ummm, ok. Now is not the time to panic or freak the bird out. Then he flew on into the living room and perched on this big Moroccan star lantern I have. Oh man. PLEASE PLEASE DON’T POOP ON ANYTHING!

Finally I was able to calmly whisk the bird on out of the house, but foolishly I left one of the two doors open. Jude began to cry, so I went upstairs to get him up from his nap and I told him about the bird flying in our house. “HOLD THIS BIRD!” he proclaimed. As if this was just the best thing that has ever happened in his young life. As we came downstairs into the living room, doggone it if that darn bird wasn’t BACK IN THE KITCHEN. Eating crumbs off the floor, under Jude’s chair.

Now wait. Hmm. Maybe this isn’t such a bad idea, I think to myself in a moment of perhaps-clarity. But no. No no no. Jude’s eyes are huge at this point. This is probably as close as he’s ever gotten to a bird, and all the better that it is in his house. But then it flew onto the stove and looked like it might peck at some leftover pancakes we had made earlier this morning. “BIRD EAT PANCAKES!” Jude hisses. “NO!”

Oh dear. I don’t know how we got it out, but we did. We let the dust settle, searched for wayward bird poop to clean up, and then I let Jude put his shoes on and go see the surprise waiting for him in the backyard. I had put the legs on his plastic flamingo that we bought at Walgreens last week, and stuck it out in the remaining snow, so once the bird was dealt with, I pointed to the flamingo. “MY BIRD! MY ‘MINGO!”

And as we ran outside to inspect our newly-placed flamingo, I saw the bird. Sitting there on the roof. Staring us down. SO FREAKY. With three of his little bird friends. Now how freaky is that.

Now I need to Clorox the house. Again.