Bedroom critters.

No, not the ones who live here year-round.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to the sound and sight of a squirrel climbing on the screen outside of my bedroom window.  Very noisy, as tiny claws pulling on screen mesh tends to be.  Plus, he looked pissed off.  Forty-five seconds of skittering around on the screen, and he finally left.

About five minutes later, it occurred to me to wonder: how did he get to that window? After all, I've been at this house for 16 years and have never seen a squirrel there before.  My bedroom is on the second floor, and the first floor that it's above is at ground level. That window looks out over my driveway (and my neighbor's driveway, and then my neighbor's house), so there's no tree that he jumped from.  That face of my house is all brick, so it's not like he climbed up.  No idea how he got there.  Maybe there was a tiny tornado that picked him up and deposited him there, and that would explain why he was so angry.

A couple of hours later, I was outside and took a look.  Ah.  There's an insulated pipe that runs from the outside unit of my air conditioner up to the attic, and it's located right by that window.  So he climbed up that, for some reason.

In the middle of the afternoon, I was back in my bedroom for some reason. Okay, I was going to take a nap.  Almost asleep, and I hear the fluttering of a bird against that same window.  What are the odds?  I close my eyes again, and there's more fluttering.  Stupid bird.  Go away and let me sleep.  Swoosh - and fluttering again, at the other window.  Yes, the bird was inside my bedroom.  Another first, after 16 years.  *sigh* Okay, how do I get it out?  I don't have a net or anything like that.  So maybe I can capture it in a blanket as it's flying across the room? Or in a towel when it comes to rest on my ceiling fan?  Well, trying those once each showed that repeat attempts would also be futile. 

The cats were of no help.  Mosby sat on the bed and watched as the bird flew from window A to window B to the ceiling fan to window A, etc.  I'd say she was figuring out the bird's moves and tendencies before making her attempt, and not just being lazy.  Tommy walked back and forth from the bed to a table, but always about five seconds behind the bird.  And Rebel was running along beneath the bird, always four feet below it, never jumping up towards it.  I guess they were entertained, though.

Eventually decided I'd have to open the window and try to shoo it out.  Opening a window and leaving it open until the bird figured out how to use it was exactly what I wanted to do, given that it was around 50 degrees outside.  Got it open, and then I had to start shooing the cats away, because they wanted to play goalie in front of the open window.  I tossed the cats out of the room, and waited for the bird to make its break for freedom.  And waited. And waited.  And watched as it kept flying across from the other window, and hitting the top half of the window (the half that was closed).  

Fine.  Now I dropped the blinds to cover the top half of the window, so that the only sunlight coming in through that window was through the opening.  Three more flights across the room and running into the blinds, and then the bird soared out through the open window into the great beyond.

Enough interaction with Nature for one day.