Were You Born In A Barn?

I’m sure spring is just around the corner. It was almost 80 on St. Patty’s day, cooler today, but the weekend looks great! Tulips are starting to come up. The air is fresh & crisp. I have to say “Sorry,” to my Northern friends – your snow may not melt for another three months & I’ll be enjoying the return of my summer color.

The problem with this time of year is exterior doors tend to stay open, especially when you’re just running in & out for “a second.” We have a double standard in our house. Hubby and I can leave the door open, but when the kids do it, that common expression is heard, “What were ya, born in a barn, aye?”

I’ve never heard any one say, “Yah. What’s it to ya?” Fortunately, neither one of my kids can say yes. Although, in anticipation of this expression being uttered, we should have had a cardboard cut-out of a barn over my belly during the birth. That would have been pretty funny – pretty fricken’ weird too.

I could go into a full blown description of the scene, but I’ll let you use your imagination. Tell me about in the comments below.

Anyway, on such a leaving-the-door-open occasion, we ended up with a visitor. As we were all leaving for the day (7:30AM), my oldest daughter had to run back inside because she forgot to feed our bird, George. Hubby went with her; therefore, the adult-leaving-the-door-open-is-ok clause was in affect.

I was busy buckling my youngest daughter into her car seat & my back was to the front door. Hubby & Cupie were at the back of the house feeding the bird. That’s why none of us saw the sparrow fly into the house through the open front door.

To make it worse, no one found out about the sparrow until 11PM that night!

Cupie has a tendency to cry as she’s running to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Hubby & I were still downstairs watching TV so I ran up to make sure she made it and calm her down. I sat on the edge of the tub and stroked her hair & wiped away the tears. When Cupie got off the toilet, in the faint glow of the nightlight, I noticed something BIG in the toilet.

I thought, “For cryin’ out loud. What did Stinkles put in the toilet now?” Good thing I was right there. We have those crappy builder grade toilets that stop up if you don’t flush between pooping & dropping the toilet paper in. I can only imagine the mess this “thing” would have caused.

I had to turn on the light so I could see what I was dealing with. When I did, I yelled down to Hubby, “Hubby, get up here!”

Hubby’s first thought was, “How big a turd could it be? Ooo, maybe it’s psychedelic in color!” Understand, he knew nothing of the bird (bird/turd – that rhymes, hee, hee – gee I’m mature, aren’t I?) so he thought if there was something to see in the toilet, it had to be a GIGANTIC poop or be rainbow swirled with neon colors. Dude, unless you’ve been tripping on magic shrooms, neon swirl should not be the first thing popping into your head.

So that I didn’t freak Cupie out anymore than I already did, I sent her to bed quickly.

Hubby arrived to see the amazing poop. Boy, was he disappointed.

We both stood over the toilet looking down. I don’t know what we were thinking – that the bird would just wake up after being peed on and fly out??? What a mess that would have been. I’m picturing the same effect as a dog getting out of a lake and “shakin’ it out” – water goes everywhere & reaks, right? Bird, pee bath, wings a flappin’ – EEEEWWWWWWW!

How the heck were we going to get it out of the toilet & what were we going to do with it???

I wasn’t sticking my hands in the toilet. They don’t make rubber gloves thick enough to entice me to pick up a pee-soaked, dead bird.

After searching the kitchen, I came up with a pair of barbeque tongs & five Wal-Mart bags.

Up in the bathroom, I handed the tongs to Hubby and held open the five-ply Wal-Mart bag.

“What am I supposed to do with this!?!?”

“Use the tongs to get the bird out & put it in here.” I thrust the bag at him. Like, duh!

He looked in the toilet and slowly reached his hand forward. Then, he quickly pulled back. Slowly reach forward, pull back quickly, slowly reach forward . . .

This went on for a bit before I asked him, “WHAT are you doing?”

“I just can’t do it!”

I grabbed the tongs & gave him the Wal-Mart bag. I dove in, got the bird, put it in the bag, left the tongs in the bag, snatched the bag back & took the whole kit-n-kaboodle down to the trash bucket (the one outside, not the kitchen trash).

Leave it to the woman to ultimately take care of things – GIRL POWER!!

Silver lining:

1. Thank God it wasn’t George – that would have scarred us all for life.


2. Cupie doesn’t really know what was in the toilet so we haven’t scarred her for life (at least not with this incident – there are plenty of other events she can discuss with her therapist later).


3. Hubby’s excited – he’s getting a new set of BBQ tongs!