Heavenly Homemakers

As I am putting away Christmas decorations this week, I am reminded of the “bird in the attic” incident that happened three years ago around this time that we continue to laugh about. I wrote about this back in 2010, but thought you might enjoy seeing it again…

What is up with me encountering critters in my house? First the snake and now this.

I will say, right from the start, that having a snake in my house was a MUCH worse experience than this one. This one was mostly just funny and made my children laugh at me.

Early last week the boys and I took down our Christmas tree and decorations and boxed them up to store until next year. We keep all of our Christmas decor up in our attic, along with a various assortment of dust and dirt.

The boys hauled all of the boxes upstairs and put them at the base of the attic stairs. I was then planning to take the boxes up the steep steps into the attic.

So picture this:  Four boys (fairly bored, disinterested, and relieved to be finished with packing up decorations) gathered around 6-8 boxes all of various sizes and shapes at the base of a set of stairs leading up to an attic. One mom (also very relieved to be finished with packing up decorations and ready to move on with life) picking up one of the boxes to begin the trek up the stairs to deposit the goods. Sounds innocent enough wouldn’t you think? Kinda makes you want to yawn, doesn’t it?

I opened the attic door and carried Box Number 1 up exactly five steps before abruptly being greeted by loud flapping wings and a beak flying toward my face.

I yelled something intelligent like, “Aaauughhh!”, and simultaneously jumped down all five steps in one leap, landing smack in the middle of my four boys and all of the remaining boxes.

I also slammed the door to the attic while I was leaping…all while still holding Box Number 1.

I have to say, the whole act was quite impressive and heroic.

The boys looked quite stunned at first, because well…this was not part of our yearly Christmas storage tradition.

It was then quite obvious that while they really wanted to make sure I was unharmed…they also really wanted to laugh. I’m also pretty sure they wanted to take a turn at the “go up five steps then leap back down while slamming a door” trick. Both of those activities are against the rules of the house…and to do them both at once? Cool.

I believe my oldest was the first to find his voice,  “What was THAT about?” he tried to ask without smirking.

“THAT,” I told my boys, “Was a bird flying at my face. Don’t worry, I wasn’t really scared. I just didn’t want the bird to fly down and get into the house, because do you know how hard it would be to get a bird out of our house? That’s why I jumped down so quickly and slammed the door.”

We had a nice laugh together, then left the boxes at the foot of the stairs for my husband to deal with later.

Best part of the story:  My father-in-law was visiting at the time. I went downstairs and, still a little out of breath from the whole experience said, “Hey, did you hear me yell and jump and wonder what was going on up there?! There was a bird in the attic that flew at my face!”

My father-in-law just looked at me, quite interested and impressed with the situation.

Then he asked just as seriously as can be,  “What kind of bird was it?”

Shucks, I had forgotten to look. ;)