Crazy wildlife

So I've mentioned the rebel chipmunks that play dare on the back deck.  And the misguided chipmunk living under the front deck, but now I've got birds trying to get into the house!!

This weekend I was taking care of the fosters when my husband calls down to tell me we have a problem.  He's not freaked, just concerned. I considered ignoring it since he wasn't very forth coming with details, but I figured I'd go check it out, thinking that one of the younger cats got into something they shouldn't have and has made a mess.

Turned out a small black bird had flown into the garage and was perched on the bike we have hung up on the wall.  It couldn't figure out how to fly down under the garage door to get out.  It kept trying to fly up, but kept hitting the ceiling.

You could tell the poor thing was freaked, which is why I didn't stop to get a camera, but immediately went to the broom to try to herd it out.  I kept telling it to fly down, and pictured it flying out the door, but it just couldn't seem to accept that down was it's salvation.

It was banging it's head on the ceiling so hard that it was embedding it's feathers there, and several floated down on top of the cars.  At one point it perched on top of the garage door, so I hoped that if we quietly released the door and manually shut it that it would force the bird out, but the second we touched the latch it flew back up to the bike.

I finally got in the way of it getting back on the bicycle and it perched on top of the door to the house.  Still up too high.  I got between the bike and the door and got it to fly again.  It landed on a two foot table, and seemed quite exhausted.  I thought I might be able to put a box over it and rig some way to get the bird in the box out the door, but as I came at it with the box it flew away from me - which was towards the garage door.  Fortunately it started out low enough, so that by the time it reached any sort of height it was under the garage door and was able to make it out.

My husband stood outside watching me trying to herd the bird out the door, laughing at me for trying to explain how to get out.. but hey, at least I got it out in under five minutes.. Would imagine that if left to it's own devices the bird might have taken a very long time to figure it out (possibly after dark?) and he probably would have just freaked the bird out to no end if he had tried (which he fully admits)

the cats made no notion they had any idea how close they came to a bird..