I never officially met my downstairs neighbors, but I know that they are renovating their kitchen. I know that because every weekend, the two of them (they are a couple) haul what appears to be the entirety of their kitchen – countertops, cabinets, small appliances – into our front lawn and then spend the rest of the day looking it over. I’m not paying that close attention, mind you, but whenever I pass them on my way in or out of the building, there they are, standing in front of a countertop propped upon two sawhorses, studying it like it is fine art. For the life of me, I can’t tell what kind of project they have going on. There is no paint, no electrical tools, no carpentry of any kind. It’s as though these two people dissembled their kitchen for no reason other than to give it some fresh air. Come summertime, I wonder if they’ll pack it up and take it on holiday to Italy.
Last Saturday, on my way out to for a morning run, I noticed that my neighbors had already set up for the day. It was not yet 9 a.m. but all the cabinets and countertops were lined up on the lawn, just waiting to not get worked on. An hour later, when I returned, I saw the two of them sitting in folding chairs and using the countertop as a makeshift table. They were eating breakfast.
Break time already? I wondered. I tried not to stare as I walked through the front door, which was propped open to accommodate an extension cord that originated on the second floor landing and was connected to absolutely nothing. If ever there was an apt metaphor for the people in 2B it was that 30 yards of unplugged power cable.
Those two could really use some excitement, I thought as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. We all could, really.
And that was when I saw the bird.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf6EyfuBLeV/?taken-by=adviceineeded
It was just a little bird. A cute one, I’ll admit, and I don’t usually like birds. Like most adorable things, this one also happened to be dumb. I say that because it was flying repeatedly, at full speed, directly into a closed skylight. Whether by natural instinct or blunt force trauma, he was disoriented and confused, unable to find his way back out of the building through the open front door three floors down.
Being sensible, I opened the window on the second floor. Being bored, I also tried to shoo him down a flight of steps with an old newspaper.
Corralling animals is never an easy task and that goes double when they have wings. Just as I would successfully fan the bird down to the next split-level landing, he would make a break for the skylight. I tried to do it faster; I tried to do it more quietly; I tried to block his path with a bed sheet, but none of it worked. We’d get halfway to home and then he’d give me the tail feather as he took off towards the sun. That’s nature, I know. Still, it’s hard not to take it personally when you’re being outsmarted by a bird with a concussion.
“This is not a game!” I announced.
More to the point, it was not a game that I was winning. So I quit. I went into my apartment and left him in the hallway to sort his mess out alone. The downstairs window was wide open, a breeze was blowing through the stairwell and other birds were chirping outside. Eventually, self-preservation would kick in and he’d figure it out. I took a shower, trusting that Mother Nature would take it from there.
An hour later, when I opened my apartment door to go to the grocery store, the little bird was still there, sitting on my banister and chirping in my face. Obviously, it was going to take more than a single open window to save him.
I was about to go inside for a broom to repeat the whole exercise, when I was reminded of that famous quote by Albert Einstein:
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I may be nuts, but I’m not insane. This situation needed a fresh approach. The most obvious option was to ask the neighbors for help. After all, they’re the reason why the bird was stuck indoors in the first place. If we worked as a team, we might be able to coax the little thing down 12 steps.
I peeked out my kitchen window and saw the woman lounging quite happily among her deconstructed kitchen. Meanwhile, the man appeared to be moving an acoustic guitar from one chair to another. He wasn’t playing it – just shuffling it around the yard, as if to figure out where he might display it the following weekend. Still, it was the most activity I had ever seen out of them and I didn’t dare interrupt.
Then, as I was standing at the window, I had another idea. The bird wouldn’t fly down, but maybe he would fly through. I walked around my apartment, alternating between opening windows and shutting doors. Then I propped open my own front door and stuck my head into the hallway.
“Come on,” I said, sweeping my hand through the hallway like a German Vanna White. “Come on in and fly away!”
This might have been a decent way to get the little bird out of my apartment building, but it was also an equally good way to have another bird, a less cute one, fly into my actual apartment. A window, after all, is but a two-way portal to the sky.
To hurry things along, I decided to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, ala Hansel and Gretel, from my front door to the hallway window – except I didn’t have any bread, so I used sliced grapes. As I was spacing the sticky pieces out on my hardwood floor – this with the express purpose of luring a feral bird into my living room – I realized that I may have stumbled on a secondary definition of insanity.
For the next twenty minutes, I stood around waiting for something to happen. But just when the bird got close enough to the door, he saw me, got spooked and flew away. This is how I came to be hiding in my own kitchen, holding a compact mirror around the corner and into the hallway to check for activity. I’m not sure why I bothered. If a bird flew into my apartment, I’m pretty sure I’d notice.
Another ten minutes went by, then twenty. Nothing. At the thirty-minute mark, I went to check if the bird was still in the stairwell, thinking he may have found the downstairs window after all. But no, he did not. He was still just outside the door, unable or unwilling to flutter off to safety through the many, many available windows.
The bird hopped onto my welcome mat and chirped at me expectantly. Suddenly, he didn’t seem so scared of me. I crouched down and whispered into his sweet, stupid little face, “You deserve to die.”
Oh, don’t act so offended. Darwin came up with that.
Unlike my downstairs neighbors, I had things to do with my Saturday. Not important things, mind you, but still – things to do. For starters, I wanted to go to the grocery store and the pharmacy. I also wanted to go downtown and shop for bathing suits. There was nothing stopping me from just leaving the stairwell window open and going about my day, but I just couldn’t leave a terrified bird behind.
Out of respect to life, I decided to do my local errands first and leave my front door propped open for the bird. I figured that maybe, without me there, he would calm down and figure out his way home. Also, maybe without me there, someone could rob my apartment. But that was a risk I was willing to take. I had already made a series of questionable decisions that day, and I figured one more wouldn’t hurt. I put my laptop and my passport in the oven for safekeeping and then headed off to the grocery store. On my way, I made a big deal of waving to the neighbors, who were now picking dandelions under the shade of their kitchen countertop.
I returned home about an hour later. The neighbors were still outside, now clipping clean laundry to a drying rack directly under a heavily pollinated tree. The bird was not in the hallway, nor did he appear to be in my apartment. I stepped on two grape slices on my way into the kitchen to check on my laptop, which was still where I left it in the oven. In other words, natural order had been restored.
I closed all the windows and threw out the single dinner roll I had bought for the bird. I had a bathing suit to think about.
oh this is priceless.
I can relate to the Bird in Distress thing, I’ve gotten very good at critter removal, from raccoons to mice to chipmunks, so I was terribly relieved to know the bird (probably) escaped as soon as you left (they see us as larger forms of danger, after all) and he calmed down a bit.
I’m intrigued by your neighbors, however. It does sound as if they are used to the patio life, and lacking a real one, they have opted for a makeshift one.
god bless my neighbours. I won’t be around for a few weeks, but I’ll be sure to report back on their renovation project once I return. if it’s a patio they’re after, there’s nothing stopping them from just getting lawn furniture :)
You are so damned funny! I nearly peed myself envisioning your antics with that bird. I’ve had bats and birds get stuck INSIDE my apartment, with all the windows open. One smacked into the window and passed right out, legs up, on my floor. Mind you, I’m totally afraid of flying birds because I was attacked as a child, and we have multiple ceiling fans for them to navigate around so most of the time I’m hiding under a desk with a towel wrapped around my head (in the case of the bat) and praying to all things holy that they’ll find their way out of my home. Not sure who is more scared?
oh god bless. the little one was pretty cute, but I was actually kind of concerned about what else might get in. there are these huge black birds in munich that look like they could grab a cat. I doubt they’d be satisfied with the grapes I left out. anyway – thanks for reading. catch you on IG soon!