My key incident last week inspired PJ to write me about similar, but even funnier incident she experienced several years ago:

I just got done reading your latest blog entry and it about cracked me up.

It reminded me of a similar incidence that I had years ago when I was moving from my Old Orchard apartment to my York Creek apartment...

One of the last things to move was my pet bird named Spot. Spot was in the fairly good sized cage and I took it out and put it in my car, locked up the old apartment and headed for the new, it was in the afternoon around 3:00 or so. Anyway, I get to the new apartment with Spot and go to take him and the cage out of the car when the bottom comes unsnapped and Spot hops out down on the floor of the front passengers side. I'm like "Oh Crap" and I go to reach for Spot and he flutters around trying to get away from me, so I think I better move my car into the new garage that came with my new apartment, and shut the door while I try to get him out so he doesn't fly away.

I get the car in the garage and close the door and go to get Spot out of the car and he starts fluttering around some more then suddenly he takes a hop and jumps up under the dash board on the passengers side. I'm like "Crap" so I start reaching up under the dash to try to pull him out and he starts squawking at me and pecking at my hand so I pull back a little and he settles down so I go for him again and this time he jumps up farther under the dash to where I can't even see him any more...this goes on for some time...finally I decide to start taking my dash board apart. So I've got the dash all torn apart laying all over the garage and not knowing if I'll ever be able to get it back in place. But now I figure I can get that little s**t. So I see him and reach for him and he hops even farther up and behind something else up in there.

By this time it's getting late, I'm talking hours later and it's getting dark out.

I was quite shook up but figured I better get some sleep and I'll tackle this thing in the morning. So I close the car up and the garage and say good night to Spot and head in for my first nights sleep in my new apartment...all I could think about all night was Spot.

Well, the next morning rolls around and I'm "up with the birds". I go out to the garage and get in my car and I yell out "Spot" and I don't hear a thing. I get down and try looking for him and I still can't see him. Now I'm getting worried thinking that he croaked over night and is stuck up under my dash.

Anyway, I finally figure I better get to my old apartment cuz I had an awful lot of cleaning to do and this was my last day to do it before turning in the keys.

So, I'm bombing down Alpine feeling really bad about Spot when suddenly I hear this real chipper tweeting start up and all the way to the old apartment he's just tweeting away sounding all happy and gay.

I get to the old apartment and I figure Spot must be getting hungry so a sprinkle some of his food on the floor below the dash and make a little trail up to his cage (Spot always liked his cage, I always left the door open for him so he could come and go as he pleased but he always preferred to stay in his cage).

I then go in the old apartment and proceed to clean. I’m in there for about 4 hours cleaning and I figure I'll go check on Spot. So I go down to the car, open the door and there's Spot sitting back in his cage on his swing chirping away like nothing ever happened. I immediately closed the cage door and got him back in one piece to the new apartment...I figured I wasted a total of about 7 hours dinking around with that little critter.

I now refer to it as "Spot's Big Adventure".