8 Second Ride At The Cormorant Rodeo

 It was Sunday, Ann was gone and, still recovering from knee replacement surgery and twice-a-week tortuous rehab sessions, I was on a sleep-in experiment to see if the world would stop spinning if I just napped it out for a while. It didn't -- and then it did.

I'd been up -- not the same as cogent -- for 5 minutes and 12 seconds when my daughter called. Erica: "There's a starving juvenile cormorant in the driveway." Me thinking, "I GOTTA cut back on the Oxy." Me speaking, "Huh? Where are you?" Erica: "In the driveway with the bird who's slowly advancing on me."

The last time something like this happened it was 2 a.m., she was eight years old and shaking me awake yelling, "Dad, there's a bird flying around in my room." Me thinking then, "We GOTTA stop giving her Vicks Formula 44." There WAS a bird, courtesy of her cat dragging it in through the pet door, so the odds were pretty good she was now in a stand-off with a real cormorant.

Sure enough, a look out the window clearly showed the field of play: Erica positioned as a safety between a staggering cormorant and the road, the cormorant determined to meet its destiny by slow-walking across a busy throughway. The stupes driving this road pick off bunnies like slapping mosquitos which rather pisses off the Actons so we're not inclined to let the automobile industry encroach on the natural selection process.

By the time I got dressed and on scene, Erica had called everyone within ICBM range knowledgable in injured birds and determined the bird was a juvenile Cormorant and, based on the shape of its "keel" (sternum -- who knew?) was starving. This was good news because I'd thought Erica just knew all that off the top of her head and I wasn't sure whether to be the proud parent of the Trivia Queen or scared she would start speaking in tongues.

The bird haven rescue people (not the actual name but I didn't get it the first three times Erica told me and I stop listening after three clean misses -- Oxy or no) asked if we could put the bird in a box while the Bird People dispatched a Bird Rescuer to pick it up. I got the biggest box we had -- a bright yellow Marley Spoon box, thinking if the bird can read, getting stuffed into a Marley Spoon box is going to be a defining moment in our cross species good samaritan morning. By this time, I've been conscience for 15 minutes, mobile for 10, lucid for 5.

Erica gets a beach towel the size of the Infrastructure Bill -- it seems barely likely to fit into the Marley box along with a pissed off junior pterodactyl. Erica looks me straight in the eye and says, "How do you get the bird from the ground into the box?" Huh? "You" as in "Me?" Erica, "I found it, I'm not picking it up." Fair enough; I actually didn't think Karma wouldn't know I'd slept in.

Me: "OK, you keep distracting it and I'll pick it up from behind and drop it into the box."

Erica: "What's going to happen when it realizes its been grabbed?"

Me: "I think its going to peck the hell out me but it's moving toward the road faster so let's give it a go."

Let's say you've never picked up a cormorant, or a pterodactyl, and didn't realize Linda Blair can shape shift into a bird, spin her head completely around and EXTEND her neck a full yard to peck the hell out of you. Yes, this is my first Cormorant Rodeo.

Erica, "Throw the towel over it!" This was one of those brilliant V-8 moments where you want to slap yourself in the head with a hammer and say, "Why didn't I think of that?"

Me: Full-on rodeo mode, I throw the towel over Ms. Blair. It's not so much I missed as it turns out an extinct pterodactyl is still pretty nimble -- squirts out from under the towel like you just stepped on a tube of toothpaste; we didn't even make the regulation 8 second ride. Throw number two, better but now Ms. Blair is spinning and is half out by the time the rest of the towel lands.

Throw number three was more a cover-and-grab so we beat the Cormorant hog-tying time by a mile but then -- like the instrument of my Karma -- a disembodied head emerged from the towel, suddenly attached to a three foot extension pole-neck and pecks the rest of the hell out of me.

We do a controlled drop in the Marley box and Erica is suddenly on her cell looking for the Bird Rescue ETA; she draws a blank -- important safety tip: Erica doesn't like blanks, she likes answers. So keeps at it until she tells them we'll bring the bird to where ever it needs to go. Suddenly we have a plan and are in the car, bird-in-a-box in the cargo area, covered with the towel and nicely secured.

But, of course, Karma votes last, so neither of us smelled the ahhh -- aroma now filling Erica's car. OMG... we're talking hazmet smell, and not a green Christmas tree deodorizer in sight. Fortunately Oregon is the only state in the nation still requiring face masks, which we put on for the ride to the Seaside Aquarium, the drop zone for injured birds to be transferred to where ever they're going (again, that's another three miss rule so I've no idea where it is).

When we pull up to the aquarium, there's a guy playing the pure-d-hell out of a makeshift drum next to where we have to take the bird. While I'm opening the hatch-back to get the Marley box, Erica quick marches over to the guy, tells him we're bringing in an injured Cormorant and she doesn't want the drumming to freak the bird out, so the concert's over until she clears the bird through his audience. I thought we were about to move from rodeoing to cage fighting, but Erica was convincing and the guy understanding.

I went into the Aquarium and told them we had an injured bird to drop off and the woman, not missing a beat, said, "Did you call rehab?" Another thing I'm not good at right off the bat is an out-of-context question, so "No, my next rehab isn't until Tuesday."

Woman doesn't understand -- and why should she, right -- "Bird rehab, do they know you're dropping off?" Me: "I can't image how they would, we just found the bird." "Where?" "In our driveway" "Where's that?" "Cannon Beach." "Don't worry, we'll call them." Actually, of all the things I have to worry about right now, calling Bird Rehab doesn't make the top 100.

Erica took the Marley box and bird into the Aquarium. The person accepting the bird asked Erica if she wanted the blanket back and Erica said something like, "No, the towel and the bird are a set."

Some times it goes on like this for days and days. And then Karma walks into your driveway dressed up like a sick cormorant. And then it gets worse.