What to Do When a Bird Gets Lost in Your Car

Happy Friday everyone!  I thought I would share with you a hilarious small story from my personal life.  As many of you may already know, my family and I are avid animal lovers.  Picture the scene from the movie “Pet Detective” where Fulton Greenwall walks into Ace Ventura’s Budapest Temple room and sees Ace humming covered in animals.  Yep, that’s our kind of environment. 

On Monday afternoon my mom was driving home with Kaylee on Forest Avenue when all of a sudden she sees a small bird get clipped by a car in front of her.  The poor thing flapped from side to side helplessly on the blacktop as the car continued to drive away.  Of course, mom quickly pulled over and scooped up the little injured bird, I think it was a finch, and put it in a box in the backseat.  Needless to say, Kaylee is overjoyed because she thinks she has a new pet, and mom is freaking out about what to do with an injured, wild bird. 

When my mom gets home she leaves the bird in the car with the windows rolled down for air while she unloads Kaylee from her car seat and takes her inside the house.  When she returns, the bird is gone!  She searched everywhere, and concluded happily that the little creature had righted itself and flew the coop.

My sister, Mandy, comes out of the house a short while later to double check the car because she has her doubts about the magical Lazarus bird.   She scours the car with the zealousness of a bloodhound and finally hears faint chirping coming from far underneath one of the car seats.  There it is!  By now, Kaylee has come out of the house and is running around the car screaming “Get it, GET IT”! Apparently, this bird was quite elusive as it managed to stay successfully out of Mandy’s grasp  for 10 minutes.  We needed reinforcements. 

My mom gets my brother, Peter, an imposing 6’4’’ inch monster, to come and gracefully catch this finger long refugee.  It was like watching a bull in a china closet.   He opened the hood of the car and looked through the engine, went underneath the car and fumbled around but still no bird.  Finally, Peter found him.  The bird had managed to hop into a hole, the size of a silver dollar, behind the dashboard.  Everyone watched laughing hysterically as Peter contorted his body in my mom’s tiny blue Honda Civic trying to extract the bird from the car.  Peter literally ripped off chunks of pieces from the car to get this little guy.  Kaylee was so excited she was sitting on Peter’s back as he lay strewn across the car seats as he yelled, “Get this kid off me!!”   

All you could see was a tiny bird leg and tail feather dangling from the hole in the dashboard.  After trying to coax him out Peter finally decided he would need to pull him from the hole. 

Mom: “You are going to kill him!  You are going to pluck his little leg off!”

Peter: “Mom, if this bird gets lost and dies in your car it is going to stink!”  “I am just going to gently tug him out”.  “I am just going to pull his little butt out”.

HAHAHAHA!!  So picture my brother freaking out trying to grab this bird’s tail feathers as it is squirming and kicking and flapping.  I can’t even believe he actually grabbed it with his hands because he is such a germ-o-phob.

Mandy is dying laughing, my mom is nervous about the bird, and Kaylee is just loving all of the action.  Finally, the bird becomes dislodged from his hideaway, intact and all!  Victory! 

I wish Mandy would have filmed this.  Mom puts the bird in another box with a lid and leaves him on the steps in front of the house as they reassemble the car.  Of course, Kaylee opens the box, and the bird fly-hops into the bushes in the yard.  I hope he is alive and well somewhere.   At least he was off the street.

The best part in this story is that Mandy’s hubby Justin asks why she got home an hour later than she said she was going to be.  Her reply was that they had to catch a bird in mom’s car.  Justin simply says “OK”.  Later, Mandy says “why didn’t you ask me how it happened?!”  His reply was,” it doesn’t surprise me anymore”.  HAHAHAHAHA! 

 I love my weird family, if it weren’t for people like us, the world would be less colorful.  Viva la Finch!!