Bizarro afternoon

Wednesday was one of those weird afternoons. A surreal string of events made me wonder if I was dreaming.

First it was the weather. It seemed to change every five minutes. It couldn't make up its mind what kind of day it wanted to be. One moment it was overcast , gray and windy, as if it were going to rain. Then it was sunny and warmer, with nothing but blue skies.

I dropped by the house early in the afternoon. I was between appointments, and I brought some work home. As soon as I arrived, I kept hearing this beeping noise – three short beeps every couple of minutes. A list of suspects went through my head. Alarm clock? Smoke detector? Remote control?

It took a while, but I traced the noise to Jake’s bedroom. I pounced on every little gadget on his desk. It turned out to be the surge protector on his computer. I had to reset it.

Later, the power went out for no apparent reason. Electricity is one of those things we take for granted until we don’t have it.

That became most apparent when I left to go pick up Jake at school. I was parked in the garage, and we have automatic garage door openers. They work fine, except they do need electricity!!! I had to pull up the door manually.

I called Georgia Power. Twice. Couldn’t call from the portable phone, though. No juice.

The final chapter of the afternoon from the Twilight Zone came as I was leaving. I was walking out the door when I was startled by the largest bird I have ever seen in the middle of the back yard.

It was a huge crane that looked more like an ostrich. I rubbed my eyes. I thought I was hallucinating.

My first reaction was to freeze. Quiet on the set. I thought about running into the house and grabbing my camera. Nobody is going to believe this, I told myself.

Then I realized why Big Bird was in my back yard. The power was off, which meant the pump to the waterfall on my koi pond was silent. I looked at his long legs, long neck and huge beak and realized he was staking out a happy meal. We have about a dozen comet goldfish in there that would make a nice snack. The water was still, making them very visible.

So I started running after the bird to chase him away. He flew up in a tree, but all that did was give him a better view of the buffet line. I grabbed a large stick and began waving it and shouting at the top of my lungs.

I sure hope the neighbors weren’t looking out their back window.

It suddenly occurred to me that if I threw this stick, hit the bird and killed it, I could probably be arrested. With my luck, it would be on the endangered species list.

Headline in The Telegraph: Columnist jailed for killing rare bird.

So I dropped my weapon, hollered something in Spanish (in case the bird was an illegal immigrant) and it flew away.

It was about then the bizarro afternoon ended, and not a minute too soon.

Nobody would have believed it anyway.