Close encounters of the bird kind!

When I came home yesterday,  my eagle-eye instincts told me something was amiss. First, the wide open bathroom door gaped at me. This had to be the handiwork of  Sugami, the maid (rechristened Tsunami by Poonam due to the whirlwind effect she creates when she cleans. Speed and devastation are the common motifs...a bit like Jim Carrey in The Mask). Second, some objects were lying on the floor of the kitchen. My initial conclusion was that it was a rat (yuk!), but when I saw that the table had been fertilized with droppings, I realized that I had an avian intruder in the house. It must have come through a partially open ventilator shaft in the bathroom.

Still hoping that the bird may have found its way out somehow, I went to draw the curtain on the dining room window. Things then happened in rapid succession. If it were an old radio thriller, the sound effects would have sounded like this:


Whisshh! (sound of curtains being pulled back rapidly),
Ack Ack Ack...a heavy, frantic fluttering (bird, its rather wishful hideout revealed, making a fly for it),
Gyaaaaaaaa!.... a bone chilling yell-shriek (me, startled out of my wits).

I then knew how Asrani, the angrez zamane ke jailer, must have felt. A refresher for folks who do not remember that:

 (move to the 2 minute mark to see the "parinda" incident)

The bandit was now in plain sight, careering on the ceiling fan: a Blue Rock Pigeon (Columba Livia) , the most common co-resident of the city.  A handsome fellow, he seemed apologetic about the intrusion and intent on a face-saving exit.

After readjusting my internal organs (had swallowed my tongue and my heart was in my mouth), I embarked on a simple but elegant eviction program: The main door was already open- all I needed to do was to coax the bird towards it.

In the next 15 minutes, I astonished myself with the repertoire of weird noises I was capable of making. They varied from the guttural to the keening, from the deep growl of the Ogre to the shriek of the Banshee. I accompanied these noises with an adrenaline induced manic dance. Sometimes I danced the two-step, sometimes the Tango, and sometimes even stood still like Lot's wife. But all this to no avail.

The bird had moved its position to the top of the main door, but seemed incapable of seeing that it was standing on the very portal of its freedom. Since it was around 7 PM, it was dark outside, and lighted inside- and that seemed to be the issue. Sometime it would converse with its shadow on the wall, sometime it would fly to another perch next to the door. This became its routine itinerary: fly to perch, fly back to door, talk to shadow. And they saw pigeons are good at pattern recognition.

This was a stand-off. I needed to switch off the lamps inside the house and switch on the light outside. But I couldn't get to the lights without driving the pigeon nuts, as the switch was next to the main door.

At my wits end (which is not a far distance to travel), I called my wife. That certainly made her evening, judging by the hearty giggles I heard on the phone. However, she suggested that I call the neighbor and have him switch on the light outside.

Luckily, he was at home and agreed to execute the plan. With greater circumspection than the bird warranted, he sidled up to my front door and accomplished the  act. The final act of this drama remained: I executed my tribal dance and let out a hair raising ululating noise. This was certainly the last feather on the pigeon's back: it headed like a rocket to the only light now beckoning it, and just like that, the house was bird-free!

Thus ended the ordeal. "Not exactly a smart bird", concluded my neighbor, as we wiped the sweat from our respective brows. I am still not sure if he was referring to me!