Who watches over you?

This house had a bird, but it is not a birdhouse.

So we had an unwelcome visitor in the house on Monday, the kind with wings.

I went outside on Monday evening to adjust the solar lights on our walkway, since I hadn’t angled them correctly when I first set them up (they were getting sunlight but weren’t illuminating the path much at all), and only had the front door open for a few seconds since I didn’t want to let any bugs fly in.

I’d been outside for a few minutes when my wife opened the front door and called me, looking rather aghast. She told me Susie (the dog) had found and cornered a mouse, to which I said, rather obviously, “A mouse?” We know we have plenty of wildlife living in our yard – we have had a bevy of rabbits this year, some refugees from the neighbors’ since they have two rescue dogs of their own, and I’ve seen a vole or small mouse that likes to hide under my grill – but none have come into the house before, so I was a little surprised to hear that something had gotten in.

So I grabbed some gardening gloves and went to the corner of the kitchen where my wife said the dog had cornered the mouse, under a house plant that’s sitting on a little stand with about four inches of clearance from the floor. I laid down on the floor and looked, at which point I asked my wife how sure she was that it was a mouse, because I was pretty sure I saw a beak and two very tiny legs. I shook the plant just a little, and sure enough, the bird went hopping out from there into the open. (We realized it was sitting on the plastic wreath on our front door and flew in when I opened it, because birds are stupid.)

This prompted about fifteen minutes of a Three Stooges sketch of some sort, where I chased the bird around the first floor – thank goodness it didn’t try to fly upstairs, as there are places up there I can’t reach without a serious ladder – and kept coming within a few inches, even trying to throw a hand towel over it so it would stop moving, but couldn’t get it. We hid the two cats but let Susie try to help find it, then we hid Susie for a bit and left the screen doors to the back open, but the idiot bird kept going near the escape hatch and then turning back inside. It was great. My Fitbit said my heart rate was over 110 by this point, and then … I lost the bird. After maybe five minutes of total silence, I thought the bird might have flown out after I lost track of it, and I sat down to resume whatever I was doing before, although I stayed in the living room just in case it reappeared.

And then Hobbes, also known around here as Count Chonkula because he’s rather thicc, started freaking out and climbed on the dining room table, because the bird started tweeting. (Not on that hellsite, though.) Its song was so loud at first I thought an alarm had gone off, but Hobbes was all about it, even though I didn’t see any way he could get his heft up to where the bird, so I had some time. I nearly got the bird, but it flew off at the last second … and flew too low, so Hobbes moved faster than I thought possible and chased the bird right up the stairs. The house came with a baby gate, which we keep closed to prevent Susie from going upstairs, and that was the only thing that saved the bird’s life, as it slipped through just as Hobbes whacked it, and it took him a second to get himself through. He cornered the bird in my stepdaughters’ bathroom, and I grabbed him and all but threw him out into the hall, slamming the door on him. The bird had gotten itself under their vanity, and for a second I thought it had slipped into the walls, but it hopped out between the vanity and toilet so I could throw a towel over it and get it to stop moving so I could pick it up. I wrapped it thoroughly so it would stay still, then took it outside and let it go. It took off right away and seemed fine despite losing quite a few feathers in the house.

The coda to this is that the cats forgot, but the dog has not. She figured out that some birds were hanging out in one specific area of our back yard, and at least twice she’s scared a bird out of there, so now every single time I let her outside she heads right for that spot. We did a mail-order DNA test – yes, she’s 100% that – and she’s about a quarter lab, so she has the hunting instinct. Great when there’s a bird in the house. Not great for the birds in our ecosystem, I guess. Anyway, there was no way that bird was dying on my watch.

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This guy, on the other hand, was useless.

I took a ton of PTO in August to go to Gen Con, take my daughter to college, attend a couple of Phish shows in Delaware, and take a beach vacation, so I’ve had just two new posts at the Athletic for subscribers, one looking at a number of top Red Sox prospects I saw recently, including Marcelo Meyer, Ramon Anthony, and Franklin Arias; and some other Nationals, Phillies, Guardians, and Orioles prospects. I also contributed a note on the callup of Kumar Rocker, who did not disappoint in his debut.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Rock Hard 1977, designed by four-time Jeopardy! champion and former Runaways bassist Jackie Fuchs; and Vale of Eternity, a card-drafting game that requires a lot of nimble thinking and maybe some extra luck. I also posted a list of my top five thematic games of all time, meaning games where the theme is great and fully integrated into game play.

On the dish, I reviewed the games Escape from New York, Evergreen, Faraway, and Gloomhaven: Buttons and Bugs; the novel Some Desperate Glory, winner of this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel; and some restaurants I tried on in Corolla, North Carolina, on the Outer Banks. I also posted a new music playlist for August and resumed my weekly links posts.

I’ve got a few things in the hopper for the Athletic, another review filed to Paste, and a fun feature coming up at Paste as well, so stay tuned!

Keith