vituperation

July 29, 2002

Boy, those local TV news people sure do get excited when you suggest a story about yourself during a slow news period.

So I was sitting downstairs Saturday morning, cooling down from my run and checking my email (read: looking at porn), when something very strange happened.

I heard a scream very much like the one Vera Miles belted out in Psycho when she found “mother” in the basement, only this scream came from upstairs. My heart leapt into my throat as I flew from the chair, because I knew that the scream came from my wife, who was upstairs sleeping.

As I ran through the foyer and up the stairs in my underwear - my normal cooldown attire - I had disturbing visions in my head of deranged killers in the bedroom with my wife. I could only imagine the sorts of things they might be doing to her to make her scream that way.

She screamed something unintelligible as I ran up the stairs. I ran faster.

When I entered the bedroom, I found my wife naked, running around in circles and flapping her arms madly, as though she wanted to shake loose the shackles of earth and soar like a mighty eagle.

“Bessie, what’s wrong?” I said a little too loudly, because I was so loaded with adrenaline.

“DEE SOOM SAY DE BOP DE BOP GOTTA KIZ MYSELL! HAAAAAIIIIIIIIIII!” she screamed.

The running. The flapping. The gibberish.

My wife was channeling James Brown.

“What?” I said.

“There’s a BIRD in the BATHROOM!” she said, looking at me as though I were the Lennie to her George.

“Why in the hell were you screaming so much? It’s a bird,” I said.

Apparently the bird had had the unmitigated gall to fly NEAR her, thus eliciting the outburst that shaved a good 4.73 years off my life. I walked into the bathroom and saw a mockingbird sitting on the far side, near the toilet. Miz Poo was hunkered down in front of it staring at it with her one good eye. I stepped over to the bird. Miz Poo inched a little closer, trying to sniff it.

“Miz Poo,” I said, bending to pick her up, “Move your fat ass!”

Miz Poo chirruped at me.

I scooped her up, causing her to meow pitifully at me for taking her from her plaything, and carried her out of the bathroom. I set her down and returned to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Robyn stayed in the bedroom, looking anxious and somewhat concerned the bird might come near her again and get cooties on her.

I approached the bird, who watched me with one glittering eye. As I reached for it, it jumped and flew between the toilet and the wall, landing on the lip of the garbage can there. I reached for it a second time, and it hopped from one side of the garbage can to the other, so it was now in the very corner of the bathroom.

Fight or flight my mind whispered, it has nowhere else to go.

“Bessie,” I called out, standing, “Do we have any gloves?”

“I have the rubber gloves I wear when I clean the litter box,” Robyn offered from the other side of the bathroom door.”

Deciding the beak from a frightened mockingbird would most likely shred a pair of yellow latex gloves, I ran down to the garage and put on my winter gloves. A picture of throbbing manliness I was, running back up the stairs clad only in boxer briefs and thick black gloves. Back in the bedroom I put on a t-shirt, because I didn’t want to frighten the neighbors by running around shirtless outside.

I reentered the bathroom and went to the corner. The bird hadn’t moved. I stretched out both hands slowly, doing my best not to be intimidating. As I touched the bird, it fell into the trash can with a thump. And sat there, glaring balefully at me.

Before it could try to fly and perhaps injure itself, I snatched it up in one hand and quickly stood. The bird tried to flap its wings, and screeched once, but I held it firmly. Then it was quiet, apparently resigned to whatever fate I had in store.

I carried it through the room - Robyn stayed safely on the other side of the bed - down the stairs, and into the yard, where I put it in a Bradford pear tree.

It squawked a single thanks to me as I returned to the house.