Hullabaloo

It was Monday yesterday.  A holiday Monday.  And although the weather wasn't wall to wall sunshine, it was pleasant enough for most of the day. Mostly sunshine until mid-afternoon.

I talked to Stella and Tony on Skype.  Ordinarily we do this at 18:30 Melbourne time on Sundays, but at that time this Sunday The Builder and I were in the car rattling down the M1, so we deferred it by 24 hours.  I had tried to talk to Austin at the pub on Sunday lunchtime, but the wifi wasn't very stable so we deferred that until he got home from work on Monday evening.  While I was waiting for him to get home from work and the gym, I pottered in the garden, did some light weeding, and The Builder and I went to the supermarket.

Everyone safely back home, Austin and I got in contact.  We were happily chatting when all of a sudden there was a distinct hullabaloo!  Marlo, who had been peacefully sleeping on my Japanese Study bag on the dining room table suddenly came belting through into the lounge room and positively LEAPED up onto the front window sill in a way that seriously belied his 12+ years.  I looked up, somewhat surprised.  And there was something flapping up against the top of the window.  At first I thought it was a humungous moth, but then common sense kicked in and I realised it was a smallish bird.  Sparrow?  No, a robin, which Marlo was absolutely determined to catch. I grabbed him and took him and Austin into the kitchen.  Marlo was determined to get back into the lounge room and get that pesky robin.  I shut the kitchen door.  In the meantime, The Builder was busy opening all the available windows so he could shoo the bird out.  Eventually it went out into the porch.  Somehow Marlo knew it was in the porch and headed with determination to the cat flap.  Move, Frannie.  Lock the cat flap!  And the robin flew safely out through the open garden door, back out where it belongs.

Now I have said before that Marlo is not much of a birder.  He prefers to hunt for mice.  But he does object to birds that come into the house.  In particular, he objects to cheeky robins who fly into the house and land on the table centimetres from his sleeping nose.  Which is what we surmise happened, judging from the tiny blob of bird poo next to my Japanese Study bag on the dining room table.  You can see his point.  I probably wouldn't be best pleased to be woken by a bird landing centimetres from my sleeping nose either!!

Austin said that from his perspective it was as though masked gunmen had broken into the lounge room or that there had been a massive earthquake, as our peaceful conversation via Skype had been abruptly interrupted by chaos and mayhem.  (I did keep talking to him while all this was going on.  And to Tatsuki who was peacefully playing some sort of game and was supremely unbothered by the excitement in our lounge room!!)

The rest of the day was much less exciting. Once the rain set in properly, we watched TV and ate teriyaki salmon and pootled about and went to bed relatively early.  But we need to do something about those birds.  That's the second one that has come uninvited into the house in two weeks.  The Builder is thinking about making a fly door, which will not only keep the birds out but hopefully the flies and midges as well.

It's a university holiday today, so an extra day off for me.  It's forecast to rain all day so probably no further light weeding in the garden.  I'll just have to think of something else to do.  I'm sure I'll manage