Monday, October 27, 2008

The Room With Walls or the Wren House


Due to the cooler evenings and my craving for a substantial dinner, I decided to roast a 4 pound chicken for our meal two nights ago. I marinated the fat bird in the early afternoon and started to preheat the oven. I stuffed the bird with onions and sliced apples and it took several hours to roast making the kitchen cozy and warm. Adding some cheese potatoes and a nice salad made the meal complete. When all was ready, hubby and I sat down to a perfect late October dinner. We threw our healthy caution to the wind and proceeded to stuff our little stomachs to the brim. With my last swallow of wine, I pushed myself back from the table and wondered if I would regret my piggyness.


Hubby graciously offered to clean up after dinner and I slowly burped my way upstairs to read some blogs. I heard him banging the roasting pan lid trying to get it clean. He called up to me asking what he should do with the drippings at the bottom of the pan. I did not want all that tempting but unhealthy fatty salty broth sitting around and suggested he may want to dump it in the woods outside.


I heard him open the front door and then I heard him bang the pan on the stoop and I heard a whuffet sound and my husband swearing softly under his breath.


When I called down asking about the commotion, he said that the new porch resident, a wren, flew into his face. We have a little wren that has tried to set up tenancy in my autumn door decoration and with the addition of the bug-filled split wood for the fire now added to the porch, she has a grocery store just beneath her new home.


I could hear the door was still open.


"She didn't get in, did she?" I asked.


"I am afraid she did." hubby sighed.


Well the next hour (or what seemed like an hour) of our leisure evening with stomachs full of food was spent trying to encourage a small wren to leave the house. We closed all the doors and cupboards and turned off the ceiling fans. I had to get out the very, very long light-bulb changing pole to make her leave her perch on the chains of our hanging foyer lights in the second story. Hubby almost destroyed the geranium I had recently brought inside and placed on a corner near the window as she tried to hide behind that plant several times.


After depositing bird doo on various walls, she eventually tucked in behind some decorative basket ware that we have on the shelf above the foyer. Hubby was determined to get out and balance on that shelf and try to catch her, but I was adamant that I was not willing to add a visit to the emergency room to this evening's adventures and insisted that we try alternatives.


We don't have a butterfly net, but in desperation, got out the fish net to see if we could capture her. Of course, the weave is too big and although we swooped it over her several times, she acrobatically made it through the holes. Once hubby and I almost bumped heads as we dived for her, temporarily caught beneath the net on the kitchen floor.


Eventually she became tired and we were able to catch her in our hands. We very gently and carefully took her out the front door where she instantly dive bombed into the shelter of the wood on the porch. I sw her hopping around the porch today, appearing none the worse for wear, but chiding me in her whistling fashion. (The photo above is of another wren, perhaps a juvenile relative, that was on our deck this summer.)

14 comments:

  1. Oh, the poor thing. I had a bird of two fly into my garage when I was out there working on flowers and they poop all over everything and one even tried to build a nest in there. I was finally able to coax it out, with the help of a broom.

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  2. I'm sorry to be laughing at your predicament but the mental picture of the two of you chasing around after that bird has me in stitches.
    Just glad that you finally managed to get her back outside.
    What a way to burn off the calories from your satisfying meal.

    Bear((( )))

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  3. You certainly conjured up an entertaining turn of events for those of us with active imaginations. I even put music to the dance performance unfolding in my mind as I read your account. Who would have thought a simple bird hunt could cause such a fiasco? I loved it.

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  4. I love it when people are kind to the birds. Hip hip hooray on you two.

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  5. I can relate. I have had to chase out two live bats (at two different times) from my house. They were attracted by the swimming pool, but somehow got in the house! Throwing a towel over them and flicking them outside did the trick.

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  6. oh, bless her little heart! i guess you got enough exercise that those potatoes didn't put an extra ounce on you!

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  7. I smile as I remember similar experiences. Can remember when building one home that a humming bird came inside. You talk about difficult trying to capture them.
    Please buy a butterfly net. They sure come in handy. Plus grandchildren eventually like to use them.

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  8. I would be a nervous wreck. I would have to catch all the cats first and put them in the back bedroom. The poor bird wouldn't have a chance with all of them.

    Ugh. Who had to clean the walls?

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  9. Oh My
    I am glad that you and Mr T AND the wren ended this caper safely. I do so hate it when a bird accidently gets into the house. They are so pesky to get out.

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  10. The bird that took refuge in my house was a cactus wren. As there is no door on my kitchen and the hall leads to the living and dining room, that bird had the poop scared out of her all over the whole area. I frantically tried to shoo her out via the sliding glass door to the patio.

    She kept flying from one side of the room to the other with me in pursuit. The last I saw of her she was flying ninety miles an hour toward the trees, finally giving up our game.

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  11. LOL You two are too funny! I'd loved to have watched.

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  12. Tabor, I don't know what kind of maple tree that is on my blog. Maybe some of the botanists around here can tell us.

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  13. I find the funny thing about this is that you just ate a chicken - one of our favorite meals too - and then rushed around to save the little bird (what we would have tried to do too). And we would have done it without any awareness of contradiction, either. The only reason I noticed it here is that I wanted the recipe for your apples and onions stuffing! So I was keeping the chicken in my mind as I read through.
    It adds to the humor here.

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  14. Tabor, your account of the birdy chase gave me a good laugh, especially when you and your hubby bumped heads :)
    I'm glad there was a happy ending.
    The dinner sounded delicious. Nothing like a little exercise to work off those calories! :)

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