8 More Days before I leave for Wisconsin and "The Lake"

Oh my! I just noticed that I'm in the single digits here and I've only just started checking things off my To Do list. Well, at least some of the things will have to be post-poned now.

Last night I had a bird in my house. It kind of looked like I had a bat, but it was a bird. My son was taking the garbage out and he left the front door open. My "wreath bird" flew inside. One of the subjects of a past blog was about a bird who built its nest in the wreath which hangs on my front door. One of the things on my To Do list was to take the wreath down, get rid of the nest, and wash the door and wreath before returning the wreath to the door. I should have done that as soon as the chicks left the nest. I didn't. Too late. The bird has now returned and there is another batch of eggs in the nest. I know because I looked. On the bright side, I now have one fewer thing To Do on my To Do list. I cannot remove the wreath and the nest from the door until the new residents have departed and that doesn't look like it's going to happen until about mid-June. I'll have to wait until I get back here in September. On the negative side...but I guess all's well that ends well...I had to chase the bird out of my house last night with my feather duster. The poor thing flew erratically and frantically around my house as I herded it diligently with my feather duster but it finally left my house "like a bat out of hell". One must use the proper tool for the job afterall and I didn't want to hurt the poor little mother-to-be. The bird is now back outside where I hope it will remain and I have one less thing to take care of before I leave for Wisconsin.

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Cliche of the Day

There were two that struck me as appropriate.

Like a Bat Out of Hell Rapidly. Why a bat would leave hell any faster the you or I, given the opportunity, is not clear. Moreover, the habitual flight of the bat is, as an 18th-century writer put it, an "irregular, uncertain and jerky motion," not symbolic of great speed. One can speculate that the originator of the phrase envisioned the bat as abandoning it's habitual motion in favor of a fast, streaking flight should it have the chance to escape hell.

Bats in the Belfry Crazy; a bit weird or nutty. Bats live in belfries, among other secluded places, and since a belfry is usually in the tower of a church, the connection between that lofty place and the human head is easily made. The expression appears to have originated in the United States; a correspondent in Notes and Queries wrote that the American author Ambrose Bierce had used it in 1907, but the correspondent did not give the quotation. In Colonel Todhunter (1911), R.D.Saunders wrote: "It's a case of bats in the belfry on that one subject."