Hector

A "bird's eye view" from the wrong side of the glass!

Last week, we had a houseguest fly in for a visit. The kids and I were sitting in our kitchen eating breakfast, and I decided to open the back door to allow a nice breeze in. (No, we don't have a screen door...) All at once, we heard quite a commotion in the family room, which is attached to the kitchen. A rather LARGE dove had flown in the house, and was flying frantically around, banging into our upper windows. (Our family room is two stories tall, with windows on two walls.) Two dogs were barking, two kids were grabbing dogs, the bird and I were both flapping, and feathers were flying. Finally, he landed. By the front door. Bethany went around the house and opened the door from the outside, in the hopes that he would fly out. No go. He flew back into the family room and somehow got between the wood blinds and the glass in one of the upper windows. That's when we were able to snap the above picture from the patio. SO... there he was, ten feet up, perched in a window. IN the house. Undoubtedly pooping. (This was later confirmed.) I had NO idea what to do so (what else?) I called Luke. He had to drive all the way home from work just to rid us of our surprise visitor. There was NO way I could climb up there and encourage our friend to hop on my finger like I imagine Noah did in the ark, just before he gently released the dove into the great outdoors. No, as sure as I climbed the ladder to get to him, he would flap, I would freak, and we'd both be the worse for wear. So, here came Luke, who usually doesn't handle live dove :::ahem::: but was unrattled by the prospect, nontheless. He climbed up, reached in, and grabbed our guest without incident and set him free in the backyard. For the longest time, Hector (as the kids called him) sat on top of the house behind us, looking back at us. It was quite an adventure, and I'm still finding feathers in the house.

Oh, and he was so named because, as cute as he was, we really wanted him to just get the "Hector" out of our house!