The Night Visitor

 

 We have always collected things, and decoys were a part of our collections. We haven’t seriously collected them for years, even though we love them, in that we ran out of room and the market up scaled to a very high degree.

We pay no attention to them usually, and haven’t bought one in years. We live with 27 duck and goose decoys in our bedroom and bath. It seems perfectly normal to us, but not to everyone. When eventually the house is to be sold, we will clearly have to erase all traces of decoy fever in order to present a sanitized image.

Saying all this, I was in the Dollar Store the other day and in a pre-Halloween display, they had amazing plastic bird decoys, probably ravens or crows, and when displayed in a group, it looked like Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. I bought one for two dollars, the new one dollar at the dollar store, a true misnomer.

I brought it home and loved it, and put it on the dining room table where it sat for two weeks.

In cleaning up the other day, my wife moved the bird to the most logical place she could, it entered our bedroom menagerie. She did not, however, tell me. I was lying down, and as I woke up and opened my eyes, within my bird sanctuary there was a new member of the family, and I was not expecting it. As congruous as it was, it was incongruous to my eidetic mind, and I freaked! My immediate response was to assume it was a real visitor in my bedroom and I knew, instinctively, one of us had to get the hell out of there quick!

As I sprung from the bed, my sleep induced brain clicked into place and I realized it was my plastic raven moved to a new home. As soon as my heart slowed down I laughed!