Reenacting "The Birds"

Ok, I know I have been a blogging nut this past few days. But, something happened that I have to pass along, because it was so sad and disturbing.

This morning after I recovered from the kick-boxing nightmare class, I walked to the front of our house to get Natalie and saw huge flocks of birds all circling around our house, going up in the trees and back to the bushes and ground, and repeating themselves. I've seen birds like this near shopping centers and in big open areas. It's like a "birdy lay-over" or something before the fly off to their destination.

So, I grabbed my digital camera, because these birds were so neat looking--they had red tips to their wings and a yellow tip to their tail. I've never seen ones like this. I put Natalie at one front door window so she could watch them. She squealed with delight.

Then, I moved to the other front door window to take a shot through the glass, thinking what a neat picture it would make for a nice "happy" blog about our day.

Suddenly, we heard this huge crash against the huge upper window above our front door. It was so loud, Natalie instantly screamed and started crying and I almost did.

I looked down, and two birds were laying on our front porch. One definitely looked dead. The other was sitting and twitching, like it was his last few moments of life. I don't know if the birds crashed into each other at the same time and then flew into the window or exactly what happened.

All I know is, it was incredibly sad and then I kept thinking how I'd just traumatized my 11-month-old. She's witnessed full bird carnage before she even turns one! How horrible is that?

The other awful thing is, I was too scared to do anything. I was sure that one or both were dead. I keep reading about viruses being spread by birds. And, I was just so freaked out by the whole thing that I just left them there, hoping they'd be gone when we came back.

During an afternoon of poker playing with the in-laws at their house, I told my mother-in-law who joked that maybe some nice cat would take care of them and they'd be gone when we went back.

Sure enough, I pulled up to the house, ready to deal with the window-kill when I saw this enormous fat gray cat sitting proudly on our front door matt. He was sitting up tall, not moving, as if to say, "Yes, I am the master of this domain. I challenge ANY bird to crash here again."

I wish I had my camera to get a picture of the cat more than anything. It was hilarious--and a BIG relief. There wasn't a feather to be found!