So, I’m sitting in front of my computer in the living room, and I hear a slight noise, and see movement on the floor in front of me. I push back my glasses and peer over the computer at the floor, and see a little sparrow bird hopping along. He sees me, I see him, and we both freeze.

Not that awkward freeze when you see someone you embarrassed yourself in front of. No.  A full-on “oh-shit-what-do-I-do-now” freeze.

The stare down begins. He looks at me, I look at him. He’s pretty casual about the whole situation, and turns around and hops straight into the bedroom. Like he forgot his hat.  But I realize he’s lost. Or he would have hopped back out the way he came.  Has no exit strategy. In over his head. Oh sure, he’s acting like he knows what he’s doing, but clearly he realizes he’s in trouble. I start to panic a bit, I mean, after all, this is my second bird incident in the last 4 days.

On Tuesday, a giant Magpie flew into my office smack into a closed window. He recovered, put it in reverse, and smacked into the first window. Corrected himself again, and flew out. I was screaming of course, since he was the size of a small pterodactyl, and ran to the window to make sure he wasn’t coming back. I have a corner office, with a window on each of the exterior walls, so I guess he thought it would be fun to buzz through the office. Jerk.

And now, it’s Friday, and another feathered friend decides to visit. What are the odds? Somebody buy me a lottery ticket!! But at least this one was small. I was slightly freaked out, he didn’t seem in a hurry to leave, and I had no idea what to do. I called my most level-headed friend. “How cute” she says, “take a picture”. NOT the advice I was looking for. My concern was getting him out without having him crap on every piece of furniture in the house. I hung up and went back to the staring contest.

I opened the front door, thinking that an alternate cross breeze would tempt him to fly into the hall. Although in retrospect, that was a stupid idea, then how was I going to get him to fly down two flights of stairs and out the front door. No matter, he didn’t budge. Walked around under my bed like he was going to rent the place.

Since he was making himself comfortable, I decided to take a picture. Bad move.   Apparently, he’s a celebrity, NO PHOTOS, and he freaked out, flew over my head out of the bedroom, back into the living room and smacked into the living room window. Which doesn’t open, doesn’t lead to the outside, and is only there to let in light.  Not a viable escape option. He recovered, turned around and flew back and hit the bedroom window, which was also closed. Exactly the scenario I was trying to avoid. He recovered again and flew back to the living room window, and somehow got under the sheer. I named him Leo. Don’t know why, I needed a name to yell.  “Leo, calm the f*** down!!”

I closed the bedroom door to give him a chance to settle down and consider his options. “Look Leo, if neither of us panic, we can fix this”, I said. He fluttered up and perched on my Lenox vase.  Ok, he was a reasonable guy with good taste, we got this. I studied the situation a bit more, and came up with a plan. In what I thought was a blindingly lightning fast move, I moved past him, opened the living room door, opened the exterior wall window, and ran back into the living room and waited for him to fly out.

Leo? No Leo. I knew he couldn’t have flown past me as I ran through the doorway, so I started looking around on the floor. Still no Leo. Then he let out a little “cheep”. Great, Leo had decided he needed a view from the top, and he was pacing back and forth on the crown molding. Ok, nobody panic, we’re still going to make this work.  I covered my head with a dive-bomb-poop-protecting-towel and sat down on the floor in the farthest away corner to have another chat. “Leo, my man, you can do this, I see you guys buzz people all the time, this is no big deal”. Leo still paced. I assumed he was getting ready to take out his frustrations by pooping fifteen pounds of sunflower seeds on the couch. More staring. More pacing by Leo.

In my calmest no-sudden-movements voice, I said, “Leo …. just f***ing go for it”. And he did. A graceful dive bomb off the crown molding, a left turn at the TV and he flew out the window. Victory! He did leave me a tiny present on the floor of the bedroom, but it’s understandable given the circumstances, no shame there.

I have already been told that a bird in my office was good luck, and now a bird in my house was extra good luck. But I know these superstitions come in threes, I can’t imagine what’s next.