a bird in the kitchen is worth two in hand

I.

A couple of months ago I was driving home from somewhere with a mini-vanload of 15-to-16-year olds when my cell phone rang.

Me: "Speak to me!"

My seven-year-old, K~: "We found a dead bird. And it doesn't have any wounds on its body. And there's no blood. It's feathers are undisturbed. And it's wings aren't broken..." I'm thinking, "I should write a pilot for CSI Animal Planet."

I interrupt: "DON'T TOUCH THE DEAD BIRD!"

So at this point the teenagers in my car stop talking about life and love and the lastest song on the radio and start laughing. I want to say to them, "Just you wait. You future parents, you." I turn my attention back to the phone call, which is not going well. At the same time I'm ruling out West Nile Virus because it's too cold. Bird Flu because we're in the western hemisphere. At least it looks like we won't be going into quarantine...

K~: "I'm not."

Me: "Where is the bird?"

K~: "In the kitchen."

Me: "WHAT? "WHY IS THERE A DEAD BIRD IN MY KITCHEN?"

K~: Because L~ brought it in the house.

Me: "Did she touch it?" Did you touch it?

K~: "No. It's in cups."

Me: "What???"

Suddenly the darker side of me pictures dismembered bird pieces distributed meticulously throughout a number of paper cups. "I'm raising some kind of a psycho animal torturer, I think to myself." At the same time I'm also thinking, "You know you'd have to work pretty hard to dismember a bird. They kind of come all in one piece, don't they?"

Me: "Tell L~ to take it outside!"

It was the nicest way I could think of to say, "GET THE DEAD BIRD OUT OF MY KITCHEN! NOW!" Remember, there were witnesses.

Me, reiterating: "Take the bird outside but DON'T TOUCH IT. AND DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE EITHER!!!! THEN GO IN THE BATHROOM AND "WASH UP TO YOUR ELBOWS WITH REALLY HOT (read scalding) WATER AND LOTS OF SOAP!!!!! I'll be there in about five minutes. Wait till I get home."



II.

A few weeks ago the mercury finally crept up above 20. So I felt I could finally venture back out to my deck. My deck can be a lovely place in the spring and summer. But in winter it pretty much serves as a second refrigerator. Or during cold snaps like the entire frigid month of January, a freezer. I keep a number of things I can't fit into my fridge on this cute little table we eat off of in warmer times. On this day I notice that there is some trash tossed about so I start to gather it up to throw away. I casually pick up a couple of 12-oz. Dixie cups stacked on top of one another. The top one falls off and there it is:


The dead bird.


I had completely forgotten about it. EWWWWWWWW! Although slightly relieved to see it's NOT a case of ritual dismemberment, I start to toss it unceremoniously into the trash when my 11-year-old daughter L~ appears out of nowhere and lets out a wail. "Mom, NOOOOOOOOOoooooooo!"


Apparently she's waiting for the ground to thaw enough to give it a proper burial.