ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

When I got home from work on Friday and walked up to the porch, I startled some kind of creature, which reacted with violent alarm to my approach and began making odd, high-pitched sounds and hopping around like some kind of berserk, mentally unstable toad.  I ran inside to drop my bags, then went back out to look for the strange animal.  I had this vague idea that it was some kind of bizarre toad or a large cicada or something.  It turned out to be a very young bird which had apparently come from the birdhouse on our porch.

The bird panicked again when I came out, burrowed into a pile of leaves, burrowed out again, hopped frantically into a flower pot, hopped out, and bustled behind a bag of potting soil, where it huddled anxiously.  And because I am an asshole I invaded its privacy and took a macro photo of it hiding there.  However, because I felt bad about how many times I photographed our poor snake in the past week and a half, I limited myself to only one picture of the bird, which was about the size of a Fisher Price “Little People” doll.  Luckily it turned out rather well.  I am like the paparazzi of the animal world, only sometimes I take pity on my poor victims.

After I withdrew, the bird flew briefly and awkwardly back into the pile of leaves and stayed there.  The leaves rustled a little bit, but the bird did not emerge at any point.  I worried a little that it might have fallen out and that it might need help, but I have heard that if you touch a baby bird its mother will turn on it or abandon it or something because it doesn’t smell right.  And because I know without a doubt that birds are stupid creatures, I think this stereotype sounds reasonable.  So I did not attempt to help the bird. All I did was refuse to let the dog outside while it was on the porch.  Since, I mean, does an unaccompanied adolescent bird really need a small dog getting in its business?

The bird chirped plaintively for a couple of minutes, then fell silent, so I went indoors and left it alone.  Later my boyfriend reported that he thought it had flown away.

Sometimes I wish we lived in a more urban part of the city, perhaps a more walkable area with sidewalks, but I do find it rather nice that our house seems to have no end of interesting animal life.