Bird in a Garage

Not "my" bird.  Just a random pic I found to help illustrate.

No, that’s not the title of yet another obscure movie that I will be reviewing.  It’s also not the title of the Mel Gibson/Goldie Hawn pairing.  That was Bird on a Wire.  I wish that had been the title of what I experienced.

Yesterday I went out to my mailbox to get the latest DVDs from Netflix (see, this is a movie related post.  Well, sort of).  I went out through my garage because a bird has been building a nest on top of my porch light right next to my front door.  I didn’t want to disturb it.  Unfortunately, the birds chose not to show me the same courtesy.

When I returned to my garage I found that a bird had flown into it.  (I had left the door up since I was only going to be gone for a minute.)  A bird coming into the garage isn’t usually that big a deal.  I’ve had it happen before; they fly out when I walk back into it.  This one didn’t.  It just flew around in a circle.

I decided to try to herd it towards the huge open door to the sunlight, but it was either the world’s stupidest bird, or the world’s most stubborn.  It simply would not fly out the six foot wide, seven foot tall opening.  In fact, it seemed to think the raised door made an excellent perch.

I spent 15 increasingly frustrating minutes chasing this bird around my garage.  It occasionally dropped me a present, which made me even more frustrated.  I started out in “shoo” mode, progressed through “stun” mode, and finally ended up in “die motherf*cker” mode.

I tried closing the door for a minute to say to the bird, “See, you lost your opportunity.  Better take it if you ever get the chance.”  No dice.  When I opened the door to all the sunlight it just perched on it again.  The definition of insanity is trying the same thing the same way expecting a different result.  I closed and opened the door again.  Still no exit by the bird.

I finally realized that as stubborn as I was, this bird was either too stubborn or too stupid even for me.  I had worked up a decent sweat and I decided to say to hell with it, close the garage door so other animals didn’t get in, and give the bird the night to dwell on its situation.

This morning I once again needed to go to the mailbox (to return the Netflix DVDs.  See, still about movies.)  I quickly stepped into the garage so the bird couldn’t fly into my house.  I saw no motion.  I then opened the garage door, sure that the noise and activity would get the bird to reveal where it was.  Nope, still no motion.  I then looked around and finally saw it perched on my lawnmower handle.

It had somehow managed to apparently shit its own body weight during the night.  Not only did I have spots in several places, I had a frigging stalagmite under my lawnmower handle.  I took a couple steps towards the bird…and it flew directly out the open garage door without the slightest hesitation.

So, anyone ever have this happen to them?  How did you get the bird to leave?  I’d like to have some semblance of a plan if this bird isn’t too stupid to breed, and passes on its genes to the next generation.

Note: My apologies to those folks who are breathlessly (yeah right) waiting for my next review to find out what film I first saw Christian Bale in.  It’s actually going to be a few days before I get to it, so I will tell you now; it’s Empire of the Sun.  Look for the review around this coming weekend.  It’s going to be that long because tomorrow is the first of the month, which is when I always do my Movie Status post for the month that just ended.  After that I’ve also got to put up my annual Big Summer Movies parent post in which I link from and to all my reviews of, you guessed it, the Big Summer Movies.  An Iron Man 3 review should soon follow that.

Don’t worry, though.  I have not dropped the Movies Where I Saw Someone for the First Time category.  Just like the other years I have done this, I will do an occasional Big Summer Movie review then I always return to the category I am doing until I complete it.

As I leave you with this, all I have to say is….”Papa Ooo Mow Mow”.