Oh Crap!

Each Spring, birds arrive at Deaton Manor and make it their home. They surround the house with singing and build nests anywhere they can find. In the bird house. In hanging baskets. In flowerpots. In empty spaces in the garage. As I write this note today, two of them are playing outside the window. Talking away. Enjoying this beautiful day.

Because of this yearly bird presence at the house, I’ve seen the lost, misplaced, and/or startled bird look many times. Mostly, the frantic, wings flapping rapidly, desperate to find a safe place look occurs when a bird accidently flies into the garage or when an intruder comes near a nest.

In those moments when a bird is stuck in the garage, I feel particularly helpless. I stand there and point to wide-open doors and tell the bird how to escape—sometimes attempting to guide it with a broom or other long object—but I guess I’m not fluent in bird because the bird usually just ends up panicking more. One time, a bird got stuck inside the garage for many hours. It would try to get out, fail, panic, and then return to a temporary resting place that it’d found on the garage door. It was awful. There was nothing I could do except hope that it didn’t run into the window so many times that it committed accidental bird suicide. I watched that happen one time, too. It was very sad.

So today during 5th grade music when a bird suddenly flew through the door of my classroom, I involuntarily said, “Oh crap!” and ducked for cover. The bird was heading straight toward me, already in a panic. In that split second, I had no idea what I was supposed to do! I knew that I didn’t have a garage door or anywhere else on which the bird could perch. I knew that the windows that it might try to fly through were over my students’ heads. I knew that there was only one way out of the room—which was the direction from which the bird had come. And I knew that there was no way to have class with a bird flying frantically around the room!

All I could think to do was open the other door and hope that between the two openings the bird would escape. Meanwhile, I had to continue ducking for cover, hoping that the bird wouldn’t run into me or poop on my head, and I had to figure out what to do with my students who, naturally, were as surprised as me! I didn’t want a bird pooping on their heads either!

Thankfully, before I could even get the second door open, the bird turned itself around and safely exited the room.

Then I bent down, ran my fingers through my hair, exhaled, and laughed. The kids laughed, too, all starting to talk at once. One of them said that the look on my face was priceless. Another said that he didn’t know what was going on—that I was teaching and then all of a sudden he heard me say, “Uh oh!” and bend down and then he saw the bird. It took us at least five minutes to get settled again, and then I saw it:

The bird had, indeed, pooped!

In the 5-10 seconds during which this entire episode occurred, the bird had pooped behind my desk. The poop landed on a yellow envelope of Honors Chorus music that was sitting on a cloth-covered chair.

Thank you, bird, for having good aim, even in your moment of panic.
Thank you, too, for providing my 5th graders with the one moment of their three years of music with me that they will never forget.
And finally, thank you for making me laugh. Yes, you startled me as much as you startled yourself. But you made me laugh. And laughter is what so many of us need these days. I think it helps us make it through the crap that life drops our way. I know it did today.