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Hunting, anyone?
 I'm rather proud of this contraption, actually. It's a home-made bird-catcher. That big colorful thing? That's a pool-floaty thing. It's crammed onto the end of a collapsing pole (normally holding a duster, for reaching high places). And that's a pillowcase pinned onto the floaty thing.

Why, pray tell, did I construct thing? Well, tonight a bird flew into our living room. It was apparently resting happily in the fresh pine wreath from Maine that has been on our door since we received it from our friends Eric and Diane for Christmas. I had one startling moment the other day, when I opened the door and a bird flew out of the wreath, brushing my shoulder as it headed off into the sky. But tonight, when Roger opened the front door to check that our cars were locked, the bird shot out of the wreath and into the living room. And we have a VERY high living room ceiling.

It was a rather comical scene. First, we tried turning off all the lights and opening the door, thinking that maybe the bird would fly toward the light. No luck. Then we tried turning on all the lights (after running around the house shutting doors...all we needed was for the bird to fly upstairs somewhere, or worst of all, into Caroline's room where she was sound asleep). The poor bird was getting tired, landing on windowsills out of reach, and trying to land in the two ficus trees we have. Meanwhile, our cat Willow followed the bird from the ground, looking rather deighted that wildlife had appeared in our boring house.

So, unable to find Caroline's butterfly net, I made this "net" to try to catch the bird when it landed on upper windowsills. As it happened, this was not the mechanism of capture, however. The exhausted bird flew into the ficus tree and Roger was able to grab it in his hand (gently of course) and let it go outside.

I'm thinking that the poor bird will be resting happily in some tree tonight!

Posted by Diane Perin at 11:34 PM