For the Birds!

Last weekend, my dog caught a bird in the backyard. It was flying low, flew past her head, and caught her full attention. She gave chase, caught up to the bird, and leapt into the air, successfully snapping at the bird. The bird fell out of the sky while I watched in horror from the kitchen window.

The bird lay prone on the lawn, and the dog began to lunge excitedly. Two more birds appeared, and they began circling the dog, chirping wildly. I hurried outside and shooed the dog back into the house, quite certain that the bird was dead.

I ran upstairs and woke the Husband. "Buffy killed a bird!" I shouted. "She plucked it out of the sky and killed it. Now it's in the yard and I don't know what to do with it. Do something!" (The Husband and I have an arrangement. He doesn't have to deal with spiders or insects, and I don't have to deal with any higher-order creatures.)

By the time the Husband got down to the yard, the bird was sitting up, chirping. He was miraculously not dead after all! As the Husband approached the bird, the other two birds returned, circling him and making a lot of noise.

"Leave it alone and come back inside!" I yelled out the window. "This is starting to be like The Birds! I don't want these robins going all Hitchcock on you!"

Later in the day, the bird was gone. I figured that it must have been a young bird, and that its parents were smart enough to take it away from the yard. We were going out of town, so there was plenty of time for this bird to finish learning to fly and get away from our dangerous yard.

We got back from our trip to Provincetown yesterday. (Spending a week with a bunch of other gay men has made me feel very fat, but that probably deserves its own post.) By the time we had gotten home, I had completely forgotten about the birds.

Buffy, it turns out, has not forgotten about the birds. This afternoon, she launched another offensive. The Husband was quick to pull her away, but once again he was convinced that the little bird was dead. Apparently this little bird is very good at playing dead, because a few minutes later, it was once again sitting up and chirping.

But now I have absolutely no idea how to proceed. I don't want Buffy attacking birds. I can go out in the yard with her on a leash, but that will get old quickly. How do I get this little bird to go away?