Birds: Cage and Shadow...

A few months back, when Mom was at my place for Thanksgiving, we went out on Black Friday--against my will, but that's another story--and in our travels we wandered into Pier 1, where I saw this elegant wire bird cage filled with potpourri.  I really liked the clever idea, but at $40 for the cage and an addition $20 for potpourri...well, let's just say I didn't like it that much.

Last week I was at the shop where I buy my favorite specialty teas--Yorkshire and Om chai--and what do I see on a shelf, but this very interesting little wire bird cage.  It's sweet, but I can't think what I would do with it.  

Then I got home and suddenly remembered Pier 1, Black Friday, and the bird cage.

This morning I went back to the store, and though I expected it to be gone, it wasn't...

My $6.00 bird cage.  No, really.  $6.00.  It's brass, about 12" tall and has three little bird silhouettes attached around the outside.  It is totally amazing.

So, I buy the bird cage, walked next door to Pier 1 and found a bag of potpourri--on sale--that worked perfectly.  Cilantro Citrus.  Fresh, spicy, clean scent.

Here it is, my adorable $16.00 potpourri birdcage, in my main bath.  But you know what's even better than not spending $60.00?  Mine is actually cooler than the one at the Pier...

And since we're (more or less) on the topic of birds...

The other day.  I'm reading, dogs are napping, peace and quiet--BAM!  I jump, the dogs leap to their feet barking, the three of us stare at each other while we wait for the house to collapse or the world to end.  The boys run to the front windows and growl at the road, though I'm sure the noise came from a different direction.  I walk toward the large window that looks over the back garden and am stunned to see this:

A bird ghost.  A shadow bird.  An imprint of horror because this must mean the corpse is 20 feet below lying in a heap of deadness on my back path.  Little birds used to crash into my windows quite often, but since putting up my prayer flags the kamikaze stuff has pretty much stopped.  I've never had such a large bird hit the window with enough force to leave this kind of ghostly definition.  If you click on the photo, you can actually see his eyes, beak, and feathers.

Resigned, I go downstairs, through the garage and out the back door, already cringing at what I will find.

Which was nothing.

How could this bird hit with such velocity, and live to tell the tale?  I looked all over the yard, down the driveway, over the embankment, into the pines and trees...nothing.  A mystery of survival.

I don't have a ladder tall enough to wash this window, and though I hoped the rains would wash away the shadow, that hope didn't pan out because the window is not only in a sheltered corner of the house, it's tucked under the eaves.  So, I had to call Jeremy, the one guy in my small town who has tall, tall ladders and washes most of the nearly inaccessible windows for miles around. 

When I told him I needed him to wash a bird ghost off my window, he hesitated, then said he'd be right over.  Once he saw what I was talking about, he shook his head and said he'd never seen such a clear outline, even down to the beak, and he'd been washing bird dust (his words) off windows for years.

Jeremy is convinced the bird flew down the mountain on auto-pilot, then croaked.  I prefer to think the bird might've had a really bad headache, but lived to tell his friends about the day he met his own reflection at Mach 4...