Daddy Diary - Day 3: Angry Birds

From the Desk of Jase:

The next scariest place in our house, or at least the place that has sustained the most casualties, is our back patio. It's a gorgeous terrace, but it features on the northwest side a huge plate glass window.

Easier to see from this angle:

Since we've lived here, I've carted away SO many dead birds that fly smack into this window. More dead birds than poisoned rats by a factor of at least 3. This has led to many surprises, like Maisy going outside to open the shutters and discovering a dead bird which had been half-eaten by some feral cat. Here's a quote you don't want to overhear your 3 girls saying outside, "Oooh, is that its brain?" or "The ants are eating its eyes!" On the day I took this picture, it only took 2 minutes to find the latest casualty -- here are some wing feathers sticking up over the stone.

Some conversations you just don't want to have with your kids this early in life. Like explaining why the ecosystem needs mosquitoes, why we should keep up with the Kardashians, or why birds sometimes accidentally fly into windows and kill themselves. But I explained it all Mr. Rogers-style, meaning I was patient, clear, even-toned, and continually in a state of dressing and undressing. Now they understand that we simply scoop the dead birds into the back yard to show them respect. And if a cat should come by to lick the only-stunned bird back into health, well then, even peachier.

In order to help explain what happens here, I asked Maisy to get a bird to demonstrate. The only bird we could find was a stuffed chicken, which automatically makes this unrealistic because we know chickens would never be able to fly into a plate glass window. Because they are mostly flightless, a real chicken would just walk straight into it instead.

And to show the "smashing" of the bird, here's the picture from the other side of the glass.

Looks like I'm going to have to pick up the pace if we're going to get through the rest of these Halloween pics. The girls are having a ton of fun thinking up the next "spooky" shots. Hopefully you readers are enjoying your holiday season as well.