A month or so ago I found a little bird in my basement. I wasn’t sure how he got in there — maybe he came in when I had the outside door opened for a couple hours? I am not a biologist, so I don’t know what type of bird it was, but if I had to make a guess, I would say some sort of nuthatch? He had brown stripes, and seemed just as happy sitting on the basement floor as he did hanging upside down on the cinder block wall. Very quick movements — I couldn’t see him in flight, but would just see him appear in a new location, much like the X-man Nightcrawler, teleporting from place to place. Oh, there he is. Oh, now he’s gone.
Anyway, I felt really bad that this bird was trapped in my basement. So I put out water and food, and opened the door for hours at a time for several days in a row, hoping he would sense the open outside door and fly to freedom. I was in knots, worried the bird would die, trapped in my dark basement.
But after several days of Operation: Rescue the Little Bird, the stubborn bird was still there.
So, finally, in a fit of desperation, I opened the door to the outside and made a big production of stomping and waving my arms, shaking a broom like a Wild Thing, trying to scare the bird out the door. I was willing to be the angry monster, for a short time, if it meant the bird would survive.
But the little bird just looked at me, hopped from clothes line to rafter, then promptly left via the tiny unused dryer vent leading outside.
So then I felt bad that I had scared the bird, who knew what he was doing the whole time.
Weeks went by with no sign of the little bird in my basement, and me with guilt for being the big bully.
So tonight when I went down to do laundry I was happy to see the little bird again, teleporting to and fro in my basement. And this time I didn’t stomp around or wave my arms, but quietly walked back upstairs.