My zoo

True story.

I finally decide I need to take our bird Twain out of her cage for a bit and let her hang out in the office with me. After all, she lost her mate (okay, she killed him, but still, he's dead) and now she's been replaced by this puppy that gets all the attention.

Not five minutes after this bird perches herself on the back of my chair, the phone rings. Seeing that it is the RLS Foundation, I quickly try to get Twain to "step up" so that I can get her back in her cage. There's no way I can talk to anyone on the phone with this bird behind me.

Bird takes longer than expected to step up.

Phone is going on third ring.

Finally get bird to step up but I'm about to lose the call to my machine.

Instead of putting Twain in her cage, I opt for on top of her cage. The call shouldn't last too long.

Run back in the office and realize this is one of the members of the Board of Directors. Not someone that you just wrap up a conversation with quickly. She has some details to go over with me regarding one of our publications. I don't know this now but it will be forty minutes until this call concludes.

Bird starts chirping louder and louder but then chirping gets farther and farther away. I realize that she has flow her way into the kitchen.

Actually, more specifically, she is outside of the dog's den in the laundry room, chirping excessively.

At this I hear Scrubs begin to bark without coming up for air.

The door is shut so I don't think the caller could hear, but I knew, at some point, either the bird was going to wander somewhere she shouldn't be (I pictured between a cabinet where I couldn't reach her or next to an electrical cord she wanted to chew on) or the dog was going to have an embolism. Or even worse! The dog would get so frustrated with this antagonizing chirping bird that he'd pee from fright. We already know the vacuum causes him to pee.

I decided to go for it. I had no choice. I covered the speaker while the board member was talking and made a run for it: down the hall, around the dining room table, into the kitchen, over the gate, and then commenced a mad scrambling to catch the bird. She finally steps up, Scrubs finally settles down, and I choose to put her into her cage instead of on top of her cage.

The joys of working from home! All this work chasing down animals while conducting a very important phone conversation in my work out clothes. Not too bad.