saffronhare | unlikely habitats

I have a little Office Dragon today. Princess !Kaboom is hangin' with Mommy because she needs a day of general chilling out to let her sinus infection subside (antibiotics started last night), but I really can't afford another day out of work. Maybe that makes me a Bad Mom, but she doesn't have a fever and does have an excellent attitude.

She's camped out in the little "yoga zone" in front of my desk with a sleeping bag and pillow, a few library books, a supply of nutritous snacks and her Leapster (apparently, Office Dragons *have to* sing along with their Dora the Explorer games). It's pretty cute and agreeable for now. We'll go home for lunchtime and a bit of a nap; then, I'll come back here for a meeting and some more work once

agrnmn gets back.

The other smallish creature setting up residence -- at the house, not the office -- is a bird who keeps visiting the fireplace. I think it's a blackbird. The beak is too dark to be a grackle; the color is too uniform to be a starling. Also, the fireplace itself is pretty dark and the glass on the door is smudgy. (shrug)

In any case, this bird is one cool customer. He's not at all flustered to be in the fireplace, like other panicky avians who flutter and flap around. Nope. He just sits on the grate and kind of checks us out --

princessboredom has named him Norbert. No idea if it's actually a male, but hey. I do NOT want them nesting in the fireplace, no way. But we sure can't get anybody up on the roof right now to put the cap on the chimney now, either. Ack.

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In NC, the house I had had a fire stove... and the pipe flute was skinny, and you know, a pipe, so it was metal. Birds fell down it at least weekly in the spring, and some unfortunate ones fell down to their deaths on the occasion no one was home to hear them plummet and they would get trapped. And, of course, I was scared of birds, and they freaked out about not being able to, well, fly, as a bird should. So they would freak out when the door was opened to let them free and sometimes not go toward the light of the open front door. Many a bird had to wait hours until my ex or an unsuspecting visitor opened the door while I hid in the closed bedroom or bathroom just hearing the noises of broom sweeps on the ceiling and a dodging pissed off bird. And once we got the dog, the birds would have to wait while a large thing with a mouth bigger than their entire bodies watched them through the window of the stove, licking its lips.

Yeah, they freak me out beyond reason. I won't even let it out of the fireplace. I scream like a girl and call somebody else to rescue me. Eek.

(hangs head in shame)

::applause::

Because he's in the fireplace. I get it. He's a Norwegian Ridgeback. Well done, PB!

Oh! I didn't get it At All. Very nice. :)

"Keeps visiting," as in flies in, hangs out, leaves, and then comes back again? Seems odd. I suppose you could light a small fire sometime when it's not in there and then keep it going for a couple of days to discourage the bird until you can cap the chimney.

Or, there's always dinner...

That's pretty funny.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like the bird is always there, so I think it leaves and then comes back. Like it's starting to think the chimney and fireplace are pretty cozy spots to visit. It sure doesn't appear to feel at all distressed about being in there.

I've now got some funny pictures of it and the dingo staring each other down. Upon closer examination, I can see the spackled spots that might mean it's a starling. Time to google a bit more.

Doom. So are you going to share these pics, or just tease us? And if the dingo doesn't get it first, there's always Broiled Starling on Toast.

I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time on LJ this evening, but looking over my piles of stuff I'm actually getting a phenomenal amount done. Strange, that. Oh well, not gonna argue.

I took them, and then needed to head back to the office. But

agrnmn says he's willing to upload them for us. :)

Now that I'm thinking about it, this is an excellent time to start a hearth flame again. Ha.

unlikely habitats

Oh, birds

Re: Oh, birds

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