Just Call Me Tippi Hendren

I know, I know. Last week I had report cards, homework, and children keeping me too busy to post. This week I've been on Spring Break, but I've been frantically trying to get everything accomplished that I wanted to. I will try and get some posts in over the next week- promise!

My story is not nearly as amusing as Katie's Matilda experience, but it was very traumatic for me, just the same :-)

Many moons ago, about the time I was a sophomore in college, I came home to my mom's house one lovely spring afternoon. As I walked up to the front door, I was thinking to myself, "Yeah, maybe it's time to take down the Christmas wreath. Ya think?" As I was turning the nob to open the door- BAM! A freaking bird flew out of the freaking nest- RIGHT AT MY HEAD. I'm not really a get-up-close-and-personal-with-wildlife kinda girl, so I was screaming and carrying on like a crazy person. In all my commotion, I had left the door open as I flittered around...AND THE BIRD FLEW IN THE HOUSE!!!!

The next few minutes were kind of a blur, but consisted of me, my mom, and my sister running around the house with brooms, pool skimmers and various other objects trying to guide the freaked out bird, back outside....Ok, actually, they consisted of my mom and sister doing that while I avoid the bird at all cost and screaming, "Over there!!! He's over there!!!! Get him!!!"

Since then, the Bird Lady in Mary Poppins is my worst nightmare. If Kennedy or Deagan ever beg me to go in the awful bird exhibit at the zoo, I will promptly distract them by offering to buy them something from the over-priced gift shop. I did, in a moment of delusion, enter a similar bird exhibit at the tropical animal zoo while on my honeymoon in the Bahamas. I last about 2 seconds and screamed like a little girl. I thought my fear was restricted to smaller, robin sized birds, but when Devin offered me up a a participant in the Flamingo show at zoo and I had some flamingos get a little too frisky with their beaks, I realized Stephanie and birds will just never mix.

Fast forward to Sunday, March 29, 2009...Stephanie leaves in the morning to go to the gym thinking, "Hmmm, whats all this brush doing on the front porch? There must have been a lot of wind last night." She then returns home from the gym and is heading up the front door with Kennedy. Suddenly, and bird shoots out from a nest she has been building above the front door, dive bombing Stephanie and K. At the exact moment that Stephanie is screaming and figuring out where to run to escape the rabid, giant bird (that was about 2 inches long and probably more scared than the "victim"), a humongous DUCK runs/flies out the the bushes RIGHT NEXT to the front door where she was building a nest!!!!!!!!!! SERIOUSLY?? (And yes, I did write that whole paragraph in 3rd person).

So from now on, when I plan to leave the house out the front door- I open & shut the storm door a couple of times and make lots of noise to warn the wildlife so they can fly away BEFORE I get outside. Imagine the scene in The Parent Trap where the future step-mother is trying to ward off bears.

My question is this: Is there a wildlife counsel that gets together plans how to best exploit the fears and anxieties of the humans? "Okay, opossums, head down to broad ripple and check in at Matilda's hang outs. We haven't done much damage there lately. Ducks and wrens, select a representative and send them up to Fishers, we got a lady looking a little too comfortable entering and exiting her own home." I'm just saying.