More Tales of Animal Rescue. Sorta.

It was a Friday. Independence Day. The day The Driver family was preparing to leave for Montana. Mrs. Driver's mother was scheduled to take The Drivers to the airport. But before that, there were errands to be run. Specifically, the dogs needed dog food.

And so, Mrs. Driver was... well... driving... us to the pet store.

Then, on the shoulder of the same busy highway where The Driver rescued Lovey the Dovey (the Feral Rock Pigeon), Mrs. Driver spotted something.

"I saw a bird," she said.

This was not part of The Driver's plan for the morning.

Still, Mrs. Driver had to go back to check it out.

In the process of exiting the freeway, turning around, and re-entering the freeway in order to scan the original stretch of freeway again, The Drivers discussed the game plan. First, The Driver would get out of the car on the shoulder of the busy highway and retrieve the bird. Call him a chauvinist, call him a good husband, or just call him an idiot. But somehow, The Driver thinks that when he is inevitably clipped by a tractor-trailer doing seventy-five in the right lane, his taller, heavier frame will somehow disperse more of the force of impact than that of his sweet, delicate wife. In other words, if anyone is going to get run over rescuing a bird on the side of the highway, it's not going to be Mrs. Driver. Not that The Driver would prefer to be clipped himself. But he's just saying.

Next, since The Drivers were on their way to Montana for several days -- and since the Eastlake Veterinary Hospital was closed in observance of Independence Day -- we needed a place to foster the bird until it could be taken to Rogers Wildlife Rehabilitation.

Enter The Driver's mother-in-law. Mrs. Driver received the animal kindness gene from her sainted mother, so we knew we could count on Mom to care for the bird. She would meet us at the condo, deliver us to the airport, and head home with a bird in a cat carrier.

We drove up to the point where Mrs. Driver thought she had spotted the bird.

Nothing.

The Driver was silently relieved.

"There's nothing there," he sighed.

Then, a black lump appeared.

"What about that," asked Mrs. Driver. She slowed and pulled over to the shoulder just a few yards from what she had seen moments before.

The Driver resigned himself to his impending clipping-by-tractor-trailer. Then, as he let go of the seat belt and started to open the passenger door*, he trained his eyes on the black lump.

Squinting, he announced, "That's a sock."

Mrs. Driver calmly merged back onto the freeway and headed home.

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* Topic for future post: If The Driver is riding in the passenger seat, is he still The Driver? If Mrs. Driver is operating the vehicle, does that make her The Driver? And does this somehow disrupt the space-time continuum?