THE BIRD (in my house)

Even if you have never watched Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", surely you have heard of it. And you might think that an old movie about mass bird attacks is not scary at all, but you would be wrong. Even if you watch the movie and think, "Wow, this is so not scary...maybe even a little funny," the concept will gnaw at you every time you see a flock of birds, or you go to the beach and the seagulls look into your soul and get a little too close to your picnic. Or, if a BIRD gets into your HOUSE.

A bird got into my house. Last night. It was terrifying.
Here's the story:

I had just returned home from a very long (2 weeks) stint away for work. I unloaded all of my stuff, went to unlock my door, and a bird rocket launched itself out of my sunflower vine wreath hanging on the front door. Scared the *insert expletive here* out of me. Turns out, the thing had built a nest in my wreath. More on that later.

This is a black-throated sparrow. Looks malicious, right?? This may not be the exact same bird as I was dealing with, but it's close.

I was busy moving all of my stuff back into the house, and kinda forgot about my near death experience with the bird. I shut the door, and moved along with my life.
All I wanted was to be in my house with my dog, doing nothing. But instead, I had to do a little shopping because I had not been home in two weeks.
Soooo, I made myself semi-presentable and went for the door. The same door that has the nest in the wreath on it. And when I got to the door, I stopped. I remembered what happened before, and I didn't want the thing in my house. So I banged on the inside of the door, wiggled it around a little hoping to scare it out of the nest so I could safely leave. Sure that it had worked, I opened the door, stepped outside, and closed the door. Locked it.
So far, so good. No bird in sight.

I went out, ran my errands, and came home, carefully approaching my door in case the winged-devil had returned. Peeked in the top of the nest...no bird. I'm thinking, "Great! I scared it away for good! I'm so intimidating!"

Finn and I enter our beloved home and I head to the kitchen to put away some things, when I see something white and splotchy on my kitchen floor. That's right. BIRD SHIT. Pardon my French. Any other term for excrement does not cut it when referring to what birds leave behind.

My mind starts to race. Oh god, it's here. It's in the house.

I start to look up, looking all around to try to find out what I'm dealing with. Although the evil mastermind had flown right past my face earlier, I did not get a good look at it.

I can't see it anywhere. I start to panic. What if it's in my room?? What if it shit on my bed??? WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?!?!

As I'm tiptoeing through the other rooms of the house to find it, Finn spots it before I do. Somehow it was in the living room the whole time. I release a shrill scream, and it darts into the guest room. I call my mom.
(My parents get calls from time to time regarding weird things/situations in my house. Dad usually gets calls about bugs and storms, Mom gets calls about mice and birds. It's our system and it works.)

I tell her the story from the beginning and how I couldn't find the bird and now it has moved into my guest room, preparing to stay a while, and what do I do????? She, with her level-headed ways, tells me to shut all of the other doors so it doesn't get into any other rooms (good thinking), and get the broom so I can sort of herd it toward the door.

For a good 3-5 minutes, I'm too scared to enter the guest room for fear it will fly at me and pluck my eyes out. Finn the fearless is jumping up and down on the bed trying to catch the thing.

I eventually work up the nerve to enter the room (only because I saw it get hit by the ceiling fan and I thought it was stunned and unmoving). WRONG. It was hiding above the doorway, waiting for me.

It moves over to the molding over the window and proceeds to look me in the eye. Multiple times. 

Basically, during this portion, I'm waiving a broom around and then screaming bloody murder every time it moves. FINALLY it leaves the room and flies back into the living room. 

Mom, who is just listening gleefully while I go through this trauma, pipes in and suggests I open the door and back away so it can get out. 

This is what it did instead:

Rather than going back to the darkness where it came from, this thing gets a wild hair and darts over my head toward the kitchen. I run to open the back door, and start screaming and waving the broom around again while it just flies from wall to wall, never once even LOOKING at the open door and it's one-way ticket to freedom. 

By the grace of GOD this thing finally flies back to the living room. Finn was swift in pursuit:

After he barks at it for a minute, it calmly flies down to the floor right in front of the open door and just sits there. Birds are NOT SMART. I took that opportunity to walk gently toward it with my broom outstretched, and with one wave, it FINALLY got the hint and exited mi casa. 

It was a natural reaction to slam and lock the door (which I did), when Mom helpfully pointed out that I better take down the wreath nest or else this might be a repeat occurrence. I took the wreath down and discovered there were eggs in the nest! No way was I going to separate a mother from its babies, no matter how much I don't like birds. So I kindly moved the wreath down to the other end of the porch, FAR AWAY from the front door. Hope it can find it. 

Then I cleaned up the bird mess, poured myself a drink, and sat down to enjoy what little was left of what was supposed to be a low-key evening at home, the first in two weeks. 

Here's hoping there are no more bird stories in my future. I want to keep my eyeballs intact.