Monday, May 26, 2008

Bird in the Garage Run

How it happened, I don't know. My cat yard is completely fenced over. So how did a bird end up in the overhead garage run? You got me. My garage door was open while I weeded the front yard. I weeded for hours. Dandelions. The front yard lawn space is a jungle of clover and dandelions. The dirt is poor quality. Drainage is nonexistent. And I'm not resorting to spraying the hell out of it with all sorts of chemicals. In fact, I couldn't really care less what it looks like, but for neighborhood peace, I weeded it.

The weeds come because the old man doesn't weed his yard, but he mows it. Unfortunately those dandelions sprout a stem, flower and go to seed between the times he mows it, even if it's just a week. I weed and weed and weed, but it will never really do any good unless he does.

Anyhow, I went back into my garage, exhausted, with my knee stiff and my neck hurting and my thumb joints swollen from hours of digging weeds, and I hear a weird sound. I can't figure out what it is, but I glance up, because all the cats are in a corner of the garage run and there's a bird there, cowering in the corner. How the hell would he get into a completely contained yard, but beyond that, into that little tunnel of a chicken wire overhead garage run?

He appeared unhurt and my cats seemed afraid of him. Starling or blackbird. I don't know which but the parents outside were screaming their heads off.

To get to that bird inside the tunnel wasn't easy. I ended up on a ladder cutting the wire. I scratched up my arms doing it, because I wanted to do it quick. I put my net over him, big mistake. He started screaming to beat the band, starting up the screaming of his parents outside, who could hear him. I took him outside then in the net and had to cut him out of it, with his parents dive bombing me.

My arms were bloody afterwards. He had to have gone through the chicken wire. It's one inch mesh, one and half inch in some spots. He's a small bird. He must have run into my open garage to escape the old man's evil cats, flown up, landed on the mesh and gone through it. He flew off once I released him from my cat net, unharmed. The parents then left me alone. I am getting a supersoaker squirt gun to blast the old man's cats when they go after baby birds. Tain't cool. He saw me out there releasing it.

Anyhow, the bird was no worse for the wear, but I'm a mess, cutting my hands and arms on that wire, trying to get it off quick to get him out of there.

It was strange to see my cats afraid of a bird. When I was climbing up on a laddar and they wanted to run by it to get away from me in their face up high like that, they were even afraid to run by him. Well it's just as well.

I'm experimenting with a collar idea that might deter a cat from a successful bird hunt. I think it's clever and I hope it works. It's a simple concept.

Anyhow, after weeding and I didn't get them all, I watered the front lawn, then I planted seed and put dirt over it, to give it a better chance and wetted it down.

The sky is black and ominous. We're supposed to have thunderstorms tomorrow. I bet we will have some. I have a feeling in my gut, kind of a strange feeling, and I wonder if it's related to all the tornados occuring in strange locations. I hope one does not occur here. I just have this strange feeling, like something bad could happen, when I look at that sky tonight. I guess warm air and cold air masses have to collide in order to produce the big clash of the titans storms that spawn tornados. I don't think the air masses up there have that much temperature differential.

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