Recovering Baptist

Just call me Dr. Doolittle

Posted in Fun, House by RB on May 7th, 2008

Despite working at home my wife and I still do most of our communicating via instant messenger. It gives that sense of distance that helps me avoid getting sucked into many home-related issues. But once in a while I’ll get an IM like this: “There’s a chipmunk in my kitchen!” A couple of days ago I just heard a yell of “Help!”

You see, many, many years ago, long before we had kids, I wanted a dog. My wife wanted a cat. So we got two - a fat one and a little one. The little one caught a robin once. Scared both of them enough that the cat hasn’t really hunted since, and I’m pretty sure the bird learned its lesson, too. The fat cat, on the other hand, has never caught anything that big. He prefers moles. And chipmunks. Which explains those IM’s that I get.

You’d think that by now we would have learned to keep our front door closed, but that’s hard with little kids. And it just seems mean to close the cat door. So we find the occasional chipmunk carcass in our living room. But it is certainly more exciting when Fatso carries the live ones in, because then we get to chase him. Last night we finally gave up and waited for him to show his head sometime after dinner. I mean, just how do you get a chipmunk out from underneath a piano??? I thought the cat might be useful; perhaps if I showed him the chipmunk he would catch it for us, but he only likes to chase them OUTSIDE of the house. This is, after all, the cat that’s so lazy that the lizard it brought inside the house found it safer to hide under its fat than scurry away to sure safety.

This morning’s excitement, however, had nothing to do with cats. As I walked into our garage I heard a chirping. Yep, there was a bird in our garage. Now a smarter person than I would have ensured that he kept the door to the garage shut tight. But no, not me. I walked downstairs after a conference call only to hear a chirping in my den. After a ten minute chase I was holding a juvenile cardinal in my glove-covered hands. The poor thing was exhausted and scared; we could hear it “talking” to its parents outside. So I carried it outside and removed my top hand. It just sat in my hand for a minute before figuring out which was was up and then flew off for a reunion with both of its parents. On the one hand it was pretty cool to observe aviary familial relations. On the other hand, I think it’s time to close the doors for the rest of the spring…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 11:23 am and is filed under Fun, House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Just call me Dr. Doolittle

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