Bird is the word.

I’m standing out in the yard, watering my prize-winning azaleas, when a fluttering in the bushes caught my eye. Ok, I’m being facetious. I was drinking a gin and tonic. I don’t even know what azaleas are.

A fluttering in the bushes DID catch my eye, however, and when I went over to it, lo and behold, it was a bird hanging upside down from a nest. His foot was all tangled up in some sort of string that had been woven into the nest. Most accidents, they say, occur in the home. Apparently, this includes birds.

His little leg was rubbed raw and bloody from the struggle. While his compadres flew around me screaming and yelling and trying to scare me away (one of them even took a shit on my shoulder), I attempted to untangle him–to no avail.

I went inside, got a pair of mustache scissors, and cut him loose. He fell to the ground, where he lay, unconscious. I thought about picking him up, but decided not to. I then corralled my cat and took her inside, where she became, through no fault of her own, grounded.

An hour later, I went back out and the bird was awake and sitting up. I went back in the house and got a little saucer of water and sat it next to the bird, but it fluttered and hopped away, still unable to fly. An hour after that (which was like 15 minutes ago), I went out and the bird appeared to be gone.

Hopefully it lived. Its compadres are also gone.

My cat is still grounded, though, and boy, is she pissed.

So how’s your Sunday going?