First we must flashback to last night, when Ramón headed out around 9:30 PM to pick up some stuff from the store. He stepped out the door, then came back in for some reason and said, “I think I let a moth in — oh, it’s a bird.”

And indeed it was, some kind of small grey-brown bird with a flat head and sharp beak. Upon later comparison with pictures of common Texas birds I think it was a Swainson’s Thrush. We then spent a merry hour trying to capture the damn thing as it flew back and forth across the upstairs’ gallery ceilings, to no avail. I even got the pool skimmer out of the backyard to use as a net of sorts, but we just couldn’t catch the little bugger. In the meantime, the cats thought this was the Best Entertainment Ever, and had a whale of a time chasing the thrush upstairs and down while we cursed and chased after them.

Sweaty and exhausted, we finally gave up when the little bastard roosted somewhere and we couldn’t see him anymore. We decided to leave it for the night and cleaned up the little droplets of bird poop and pee the little bugger had scattered around downstairs (I need to mop the hardwood floors today), on the basis that we had three possible outcomes:

1. We’d get up in the morning when it would be brighter outside than in (the brightness was probably what lured the bird inside in the first place), shoo the bird into a smaller room with a window, open said window and shoo it out.
2. The bird would become exhausted and die somewhere, most likely in the craft room as that’s where it was spending most of its time, and we’d find it by the smell.
3. The J Crew would leave us a messy little present, showing us what good hunters they were.

Luckily for everyone except the J Crew, Outcome One was what happened. I got up and saw the thrush flying back and forth in the craft room. I took a screen out of one of the windows there, but Jeremy the Big Orange Idiot kept trying to climb out the window and my cursing was disturbing Ramón, who was on a business call. By sheer good luck, however, I’d left the bedroom door open and it flew in there.

Ramón got off his call, followed me in, and turfed out the cats while I opened a window, removed the screen and tried to shoo the thrush out. It flew past me just as he asked me a question — while I was turned to answer our guest flew past me and outside, because I then heard a loud burst of birdsong that I translated to mean, “Guys, you would not BELIEVE what happened to me!”

So that was our adventure with local wildlife. In associated news we are cleaning our craft room this weekend because it is a complete disaster in there and I’m sure the little bugger crapped on things. Whee.