Put A Bird (On) In (It!) Your Room!

After a labor-intensive morning of cutting salad mix and digging out greenhouse #2, we all loaded into Rita’s station wagon and took off on our first field trip! We spent the afternoon helping out Jen and Ted at the Food For Lane County Youth Farm, a non-profit located in Springfield. The farm grows vegetables for the county’s food bank and also serves as an educational site for the community. We spent an hour or so planting onions and spreading manure in one of the greenhouses. Then, in what seemed like a cruel joke, Jen asked for volunteers to help her lay out agrabon. We all just stood there, speechless, looking at each other. After the silence crossed the threshold into awkward, I finally offered to do it, everyone else sighing with relief. Yeah, not our favorite chore after yesterday’s agrabon shit show.

We got back late and I fell asleep as soon as I slipped into my two sleeping bags. A few hours later I was startled awake by a thudding sound coming from the boys’ rooms above me. Thudding, feet pounding, furniture being shoved all around, laughter – I seriously had the thought that there was a game of musical chairs going on. I laid awake for twenty minutes, trying to let go of the extreme irritation I felt - but I only grew hotter. Finally, I whipped out of my sleeping bags, shoved on my boots and threw open my door, ready to scream out - - (like I used to do to the drunks outside my window in DC) - - when I caught Lisa heading upstairs. Hiding my original intent, I asked calmly (and almost with a sense of concern, lol) “What is going on up there?” --- Apparently, when Bobby crawled into bed, exhausted like the rest of us, he came to find that a little sparrow had taken up occupancy in his room while we were out. It would not stop chirping - as if it were a bright spring morning - and despite their creative efforts, he and Paul just couldn't figure out how to catch it.

I sheepishly ducked back into my secure, insulated room, and thanked my lucky stars, again, for Sabina’s borrowed car and my keen foresight to be the first one here – without which, I very well could have been, the unfortunate one trying to catch a bird in the middle of the night. 

Put a Bird on It!