Sccccraaatchhhhh.....

Left- GooseyGirl. Right- BirdMan.

The children think my frantic screams of panic are hilarious. When have they had the opportunity to hear my frantic screams of panic, you ask? Well, that would be yesterday.

First off, let me tell you that GooseyGirl and BirdMan have decided they are going to become vets and open up a practice together. These are the drawings GooseyGirl made of their future careers. Notice that GooseyGirl is in charge of the cats and BirdMan is in charge of the birds. I'm not sure what they are going to do about the random dog that will need a checkup but that's to be decided later. The point is they both love taking care of animals.

Which brings me back to yesterday. We were sitting in the schoolroom doing our daily geography lesson. I started to hear a wierd scratching sound emanating from the schoolroom's fireplace.

There was something alive in the fireplace.

BirdMan said, "It's a snake, mom. Here, catch it in this". He hands me the pencil caddy from the desk. It is approximately three inches wide by 5 inches tall. Yeah, right.

I slowly opened the fireplace door, quickly peered in, my heart sank and I closed the fireplace back up again. It was a bird.

Gooseygirl said, "Mommy, what if its wing broke?"

My first instinct is to wait until the man of the house gets home to deal with it. My feminist ways disappear rapidly in instances like this. Removing live critters from fireplaces is definitely a man job. However, there was no way my little vets-in-training were going to allow the itsy-bitsy birdie to scratch and flutter for the next few hours until daddy got home.

BirdMan finds a plastic bucket and says, "Here, mom, catch it in this". That boy has more faith in me that I have in myself.

I take a deep breath, remind myself that I'm a grownup, open the fireplace door and plunge the bucket over the bird.

I missed.

As it flew out straight towards me, I started the frantic, incomprehensible screams of panic mentioned above. I yelled, "WHAAA, WHAAAA, WHAAAA... CLOSE THE DOOR TO THE HOUSE!"

GooseyGirl and RocketMan ran through the door and slammed it shut. BirdMan stays in the room with me and is thrilled. He informs me that the bird is a Carolina Wren. All I know is that I have a potentially injured bird flying around in the schoolroom.

I opened the back door and, thankfully, it miraculously flew out into the great blue yonder.

After a big sigh of relief, I opened the door to the house to let the other two kids back in, except I couldn't find GooseyGirl. I searched and finally found her huddled under her covers in her bed frightened to death. "Mommy, I thought it was going to peck on me", she said. I guess it is a good thing that she won't be the bird vet.

Later that night at the dinner table, the kidlets told Daddy this story with enhanced impersonations of my screams of panic. There were belly laughs all around as they imitated how freaked out I was, yelping and running through the schoolroom. Daddy said he would have given anything to have been able to have been a fly on the wall.