Ghost Bird

Our house helper left us a lovely present the other day: an owl in Mona's bicycle basket with a newspaper lid.

It's the weekend. We work on Saturday morning in preparation for finals week at school, then kick back at the house for the evening with a friend in tow. Mona goes into the side room where her bike is parked and begins screaming that there's something in the room. I grab my shoe expecting a roach only to hear her say, "I don't think your shoe's going to be big enough."

Sure enough, I peer into the basket to see an owl sitting with its back to me, its head turned all the way around to see my face. A gorgeous creature about the size of Errol from the Harry Potter series (volleyball sized).

I send a text message to our helper. She writes back the following: "When I opened the curtains, the bird was already on top of the ceiling fan in the front room. The bird flew down to land and the orange cat tried to catch and kill it. So I caught it and put it in the bicycle basket. I thought that bird was there last night in your house, and that bird is often killed by cats (its name is “ghost bird”)."

What?! She left the bird in the house rather than releasing it, and she didn't leave us a message or note about it? By the time we found it, it had been in captivity for more than 24 hours, sitting silently in the basket. And the cats didn't make a fuss about it either. In fact, when I brought it through the living room to release it, Homer, the orange cat she referenced above, didn't even open his eyes from his lounging position in agknowledgement of the momentous occasion. Completely docile.

Anyway, now we can say that we've had a "ghost bird" in our house. Hey, that's a great prank. Catch a large bird and put it in someone's house. Images of Will Ferrell with a cougar in his car come to mind, on a much more tame scale, of course.