The Visitor

Last night I'm closing up the house for the night. Like countless nights prior I open the door, reach out to hit the button to bring the door slowly down. The door jumps to start the decent when I heard a swoosh and out of the corner of my eye I get a glimpse of a brown outstretched wing- a large wing. In a split second my mind computes: large wing= large bird in my garage. In one fluid motion I jump back and slam the door closed yelling "Holy crap". For several beats I'm stunned and stand there motionless. I realize that both Jay & Cat are staring at me. "There's a giant bird in our garage."

They both stare at me. I can tell neither of them believe me.

"Now there's a giant bird trapped in our garage," Jay asks sceptically.

"Yes."

We need to open the garage door back but I'm not about to open the door to our house and risk whatever it is getting inside. I remember we have an extra door opener- a keychain version that we keep inside. I retrieve it and we all go out the front door & stand in the driveway. I hit the button.

The door opens- revealing our cars & other crap. No bird. Now I know what I saw. But I really started to doubt my sanity for a second.

Jay walks into the garage in between our automobiles. And we hear flapping- from the other side of his car up jumps something with wings. Jay high-tails it out of the garage.

"I told you there was a giant bird in there."

The creature lands on our lawn mower handle.

"OMG- It's a freakin' hawk," Jay declares.

Now we're all standing there staring at the hawk and it's staring right back at us.

"Now what?"

The next logical step when you have a large bird of prey in your garage is get the camera. Using my digital zoom to get in closer than I cared to I took several pictures. It sat there motionless watching me. The photo uploaded along w/ this blog was taken with my cell phone of a photo on the preview screen of my camera. My cell phone didnt zoom & the low light of the situation I knew it wouldnt take properly and I also knew I wouldnt uploaded the photos off my camera last night. I just had to share this. I put my camera away and we begin to discuss how to get him to leave. We decide to leave the door open and hope it would fly out on its own accord. An hour later I found it in the exact spot we left it in.

I went in and pulled up google- there's surprisingly little on hawk removal on the Internet.

Jay decides to get his car out of the garage- mumbling something about hawk poop and talon scratches in his paint (but my car's in there too). He slowly stepped into the garage and inched up the side of his car. When he was at the drivers side door and hawk lifted up its leg displaying it's talons at him. Jay quickly gets in and shuts the door. He starts the car and the hawk remains steadfast in his spot on the lawnmower handle. Once the car is out in the driveway we see blood and feathers that obviously dont belong to Mr. Hawk on the hood. I go in to try more Internet searches and Cat stays outside, cell phone in hand- just in case she needs to call emergency services for Jay. Again, I find nada. I decide to try to set off my car alarm to see if it would scare it out. Nope. Jay goes around to the side door of the garage to see if he can encourage the bird to fly out. Using a variety of tactics- one which involved a yard rake the only the we managed to do was to get the bird to fly to the top of the garage door and back to the mower and then eventually retreat to under our water heater. At this point we just resign ourselves- we'll have to leave it open all night. And joked about a would-be thief being attacked by the hawk in the middle of the night.

This morning I need to move CJ's car seat over to Cat's car. Confident the bird left in the middle of night but also cautious I decide to go back out the front. And there I find all of our things where we left them and Mr. Hawk sitting quietly on the lawn mower handle. He turns his head to look at me. "Why are you still here?" I say aloud.

The bird gave me the finger and turned his head away.

I go back in and announce that we have a problem.

Jay goes out to pull my car out of the garage- so I can move the car seat & so I can get WC in the car & off to school. But when he entered the garage he watched the hawk closely and he inched to the car. The hawk appeared nervous & glanced at the open side door. So he took a step closer to the hawk. The hawk looked back at the door. He stepped one closer and it flew out the side door. Jay ran over and hit the button to bring the door closed- scared the hawk wouild circle & fly back inside. Our visitor is gone. And I can say that I will not be leaving that garage door open again- anytime soon. I wonder if there's any "meaning" to this incident? Are hawks good luck or bad luck? I guess it depends if you're on their menu.