Bird In The House!

Friday night, for the first time in two weeks, Ginny and I went out for our Date Night; this was the first time I’d set foot outside since we got sick.

We’ve been together in the same house but miles apart because our illness created a barrier. Ever try to kiss a coughing girl with a runny nose?

We’d watched the tv news before we left the house, so in the restaurant our conversation naturally turned to the state of the economy. TV says that 100,000 Americans lost their jobs this month.

Since President Obama is moving the terrorists prisoners of war out of Guantanamo prison camp, I suggested that the government round up all oil company executives (tv news says Exxon garnered the largest prophet of any company in the history of the world last year), all stock brokers, bankers, mortgage lenders, insurance agents, etc. And put them in Guantanamo to be tried for treason. These villains have damaged the U.S. more than any other terrorists.

None of the bailout packages or economic incentives the President proposes will touch us personally at all. All that money goes to somebody else.

However, I assured Ginny that at least my job will never be outsourced to a foreign country.

“There’s not a peasant in China who wants to do the work I do for the same amount of pay,” I said. “He’d want more money”.

My book sales have not done well recently.

When we returned home, we discovered damage.

Part of a statue from a high shelf lay on the living room floor. Fancy, Ginny’s lovebird, squawked frantically in her cage. A model clipper ship (the Joseph Conrad) I’d worked on for ages had been knocked on its side as though it had floundered…

Ah, there’s the culprit—a bird in the house.

Apparently as we left for our date, the bird had entered to escape the cold.

WE propped open the front door. I grabbed a broom. Ginny, a towel. We stalked the invader to capture and set it free outside. Not understanding our intention, the bird careened around the living room and kitchen from curtain rod to bookcase to ceiling fan blade to model ship to chair back in a panic.

Laughing, we finally chased it out the open front door.

Then we sat down to reminisce about how when all the kids were home and we lived in HUD housing and Ginny did not have a dryer but hung clothes on the line, wrens loved to nestle in folds of our clothes and inadvertently be brought into the house.

The cry would go up, “Bird in the House! Bird in the house!”

We and all the kids would garb dishcloths, towels, sweaters, brooms and chase the bird through the house. The three cats leaped in the air trying to catch the wren first. Broom-holder batted them back. Our black lab Sheba would charge around barking frantically but having no idea of what caused the commotion. At last the bird would be captured and released unharmed outside.

The Peaceable Kingdom our home was not.

In fact, I once wrote a magazine article, “The Hand Of The Almighty Smites A Sea Gull”, about one Cowart bird encounter. It can be found at http://www.cowart.info/Family%20Life/seagull/The%20Hand%20Of%20The%20Almighty%20Smites%20A%20Seagull.html

As I remembered that incident, it half-way brought to mind another:

Years ago I wrote some article for some magazine (can’t remember which one) and inside the back cover of that magazine was a poem by some lady who wrote about a sparrow being trapped on her sun porch.

The poet likened that situation to the frustrated, trapped feeling of so many people.

People who could identify with how that bird was feeling

Her trapped sparrow tried frantically to escape by flying here and there, crashing into the wire mesh, feeling trapped and frustrated and thwarted by its circumstance—yet the screen door stood open all the time.

The door to freedom always stands open.

Jesus once said, “I am the door”.