A Natural Family

Guest posting by J (father to be.)

Our attic is the same square footage as our apartment, which means that we don’t get rid of anything - we just put it upstairs. Over the last three years, the pile of [valuables] up there had sprawled into a complete mess. And that complete mess included a good deal of baby stuff given to us by friends and family.

So one day, K, because she’s better than me, headed upstairs to tame the wilds of our attic while I attempted to assemble a bookshelf in our apartment (I’m not sure who ended up assembling whom). Just before we split up, we had this conversation in the kitchen:

Her: Okay...I’m going up now...there are birds [practically spitting the word] up there, I just know it.

Me: Birds?

Her: I heard them chirping the other day. You heard it too.

Me: Yeah, I thought they were just nesting in the gutter outside or something.

Her: They’re up there. I know it.

Me: Mmm-hmm. Probably big nasty Hitchcock birds that mean you all sorts of harm.

[She leaves the kitchen to go to the attic. One one thousand, Two one thou-]

Her: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! [high pitched and accompanied by the sound of her scrambling down the stairs] There are birds!

Me: [Giggling, marveling at her excellent comedic timing]

Her: I’m not kidding!!! There are four birds up there! One’s just sitting on the rail looking at me all mean.

We both go up to the attic now, me leading and her trailing with the lid of a rubbermaid storage container (they could’ve been wielding swords, and then I would’ve looked pretty silly).

Bird count: two. They look hungry, and they aren’t the kinds of birds you would want as pets. I think they might be related to that bird my cat dragged onto the carport when I was 6. I have to assume they’re willing to go Inigo Montoya on both of us.

I open the screens on two of the windows and start coaxing one of the birds toward one of the windows. He didn’t seem all that smart, and he definitely wasn’t interested in leaving, so I finally found some sort of stick-like poker and nudged him out.

Well, the second bird saw the whole horrifying scene and was having none of this. He backed into a corner and stared me down while I opened the third window screen. I tried scaring him out, then I tried luring him with bread - no dice.

Meanwhile, that bookshelf’s not building itself, so I went back downstairs, leaving K with instructions to call me if he makes a move toward the window.

Ten minutes later:

Phone: [ring]

Caller ID: [Kathryn]

Me: Hey.

Her: [in a whisper, small and terrified] Help me.

The second bird went out the window, and K and I are thriving in therapy.