On the Wing

No one is awake, not even the sun. Inside the house, there is only silence and my mum is making her morning coffee. A tiny creature hops across the living room floor in the gloom. "Suzy is that you?" Mum calls. No answer. Thinking her daughter's pet rat has escaped, mum moves towards the little creature. As the mystery thing hops into the light, mum gasps, a tiny sparrow takes flight. Mum is shaking me awake. It can't be time to get up, not yet.  I look around rubbing the sleep from my eyes. "Ella! There is a bird in the house! Come catch it for me!" I sit up straight, A bird! "It's in the kitchen, come on!" I grab a small knitted blanket on my out and handing one corner to mum, we weild it like a fishing net. Above the sink the poor thing is flying into the window again and again. I move forwards and the sparrow dashes over our heads and into the living room. BAM! He slams into the bay window desperate for freedom and the open world outside. We cast our net. We miss. He flys in my room and hits the light, looking for the sun. Landing on my bed he sizes me up. Then he sizes me down. I sit on the bed with him and he dodges for the wall and slips in the narrow crack of the bed and under it. Oh boy. I crawl under there with him. We play the staring game for a while. He stares. I stare back. My eyes are feeling dry, but I win. Defeated by my amazing staring skills, he runs out from under the bed and flys around mum, who of course squeals in a bit of fright. I come out from under the bed too, not as gracefully as the tiny sparrow, and probably twice as scary. He spots another bird in the mirror, and flying to greet him, smacks into the mirror, when is this little dude gonna learn? We try to cast our net again, and again a miss. He dives under the bed again. Me too. This time I stuff pillows in the cracks so he won't go down there anymore. I think myself a genius. He is smarter. After I shoo him out a third time he hits the mirror once more before taking roost on the ceiling fan blades, and then swoops to a shelf where Sunkist my Leopard Gecko lives. The little bird nestles between the gecko tank and the shelf wall, Sunkist greets him with the friendly death stare and a slo-mo blink. GOTCHA! The little bird in my hand is so small and delicate, like the size of a mexican wedding cake, or snowball cookie, but not a nut-roll. I'm captivated by his beautiful striking features and teeny-ness. What a perfect creation, I marvel. Then we're walking to the front door. I stick my arm out into the cold winter and open my hand, he stays and gives me one last look. I like to think he was thanking me. Then he was gone, fluttering into the gray wild so fast I think I might have imagined the whole thing. Back in bed the giddiness of freedom is running in my veins, I fall asleep dreaming happily of flying endlessly into the sky.