Imaginary friends

My husband is a very smart man. And kind. Like when he spent a half hour wrangling this little guy out of the house this morning:

Do you see him sitting there, up at the top of the dated chandelier? Don't worry, no finches were smacked by any brooms during the liberation of this bird. It took the old laundry-basket-over-the-birdie trick, the trail of bread crumbs trick, and several open doors, but ultimately the little finch found his way outside.


Anyway, Kenny's a nice guy. But every now and then  . . . wait, no, make that for the first time ever, he was possessed by mischief, which is why when he's not shooing out finches, he sometimes has to shoo out imaginary homeless guys named Ulysses.


It all happened here:

This is my backyard. And I didn't bother cleaning it up before photographing it because I'm keeping it real. Anyway, our yard is small but cute and best of all, it backs up against a green belt so we have no neighbors right behind us. This is the view from the kitchen window:

This used to be a little slice of nirvana until Kenny lost his mind two weeks ago. The patch of grass right outside the window above was the scene of the crime.


Kenny, James and I were outside about 11:00 at night waiting for the Pleiades meteor shower. It's nice and dark at our end of the cul-de-sac with no light pollution to interfere with our stargazing. We all lay together snuggled under a blanket watching for shooting stars when a rustling began in the bushes on the other side of the back fence. 


It was a cat, okay? I know it was a cat. KNOW it. NEED to believe it with every fiber in my being. But Kenny decided it was a homeless man named Ulysses living in our bushes. He had James convinced in five minutes flat, but  me? It took, like, seven. Even though I knew it was a cat there was that part of me that thought, "Maybe it IS a homeless man named Ulysses," anyway.


And so James and I ditched Kenny and ran inside.


Hahaha, Kenny. You're SO funny. But guess what? The joke's on him because guess who has to get up to check for Ulysses every time I hear something creaking in the house at 3 a.m.?