A Spring Surprise

It's Spring Break.  We went on a little four day get-away.  It was great, and will be reported on once I decide to download all the pictures.  But, do you want to hear a CAH-RAE-ZEE story?!?!  I thought so.

Last night, we traveled home from where we were.  We walk in the door.  We unload the groceries.  We start unpacking the suitcases.  Sleeping Beauty points to the floor and says, "Mom, did Dad drip paint on the floor, or what?"

"I guess.  Weird."  And I scrape it off with my fingernail.  (Thank you laminate floors.)

And then SB walks into the front room and says, "There's some in the entryway, but it's also yellow like the kitchen paint.  How'd it get in here?"  And I scrape it off with my fingernail.  (Thank you laminate floors.)

And then I'm really puzzled, and I say to King, "How do we still have drips of paint on the floor?  Did the ceiling get wet and drip spots or something?" looking up to inspect our newly painted ceilings.  Nope. They're fine.

King says, "Um, I've mopped the floor since we painted, where are the spots?"  And the girls keep finding more, and I'm getting a little creeped out, and then Snow White says, "This one has gray spots in it," just as King says, "Uh...could it be bird poop or something?"  Likely thinking of that one time I went to the doctor and a little bird found it's way down our chimney and scared the jelly beans out of me when I came home and it flew at my head.

But we had been gone for four days.  Was it alive or dead?  And then the girls are freaking out and we see all of these pale yellow to gray spots ALL OVER the kitchen and King grabs the broom and we prepare for a full-on war with the Alfred Hitchcock birds.  And I realize, I had scraped those spots off with my fingernail.  Ew.  (Thank you anti-bacterial soap.)

The girls move on to the family room and the living room, looking for spots and King and I start looking under couches and behind curtains for a bird the size of an ostrich.  (Okay, not really.  But, honestly, I was getting a little freaked out and was SURE that a bird was about to jump out from behind the book shelf and kill me or something.  Plus, what little bird could make such a big mess?  Think Big Bird crossed with boogie man and that is what this thing was growing into in my mind.)

And, from the front of the house comes Sleeping Beauty's little voice, "Ew, it got some on the piano, and on AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!  A BIRD!"  And all three girls come running to the family room and King runs in the opposite direction with his broom to protect all of us from the mighty intruder--which was actually a pathetic, sad, limping black/blue bird that was mostly dead and quite sickly.

He scurried the little birdy outside and once he was out of the view of the girls, he put the sorry thing out of it's misery and came back in to help inspect the damage.  Poor little thing.  Poor evil little messy thing.

The good news?

• I'm super anal about closing all of our doors when we go out of town.  Luckily, I was the last one in the house, so they were all actually closed.  So no bird in our bedrooms, pantry or the bathroom.  Phew.
• I am the only person in our house who likes all of the kitchen cupboards closed (seriously, why am I the only one who knows how to close those?!), and I was the last one in the house, so they were all closed.  Phew.
• I had put all of the clean clothes in my bedroom before we left.  In (lots of) piles and (lots of) baskets.  Imagine how much more laundry I would have had to do if I had left it in the dining room where it was the day before?  Yikes.  
• We found no bird droppings on our couches or large rug.  So that's nice.  
• Maybe our color of carpet hides bird dropping color (gross, gross, gross!!!) or it missed the carpet?  Am shampooing the carpet anyway.  Gross!
• Our washing machine and dryer work very well and we have lots of bleach and Lysol on hand. 

Because that is pretty much all I have done since we got home.  Everything that could be thrown in the washer has been washed.  I have sanitized all surfaces so many times, I might be wearing holes in the counter top.  I've mopped the floor twice, just to be sure.  Forget doing vacation laundry and unpacking those suitcases, I am not getting the bird flu or salmonella or whatever rare disease bird droppings might like to share with us.  Yuck.  No thank you.  I think before King made dinner, I had to wash every pan, just in case the bird happened to open up the cabinets and look at the pans.  (You never know.  I swear those birds on the Muppet Show had opposable thumbs.)

We are NOT ever having that fun surprise again.  So, guess what I'm doing tomorrow?  Buying new screen for the top of our chimney and climbing up on the roof to install it.   Even if I have to brave climbing on said roof in a snowstorm to do it.  (Which it looks like I will.  Welcome, Spring.  I just love Springtime surprises.)  And this new screen chimney sculpture will be my new monument to honoring the Springtime birds.  The outside ones.

(It occurs to me that perhaps I have read too much Daphne du Maurier of late.)