Well, now I can say that I’ve done it: Turned a chickadee into a canary.
I mean, the hard thing was catching the chickadee. For two days, Jorge, Jorge Jr. and myself had chased the bird from rafter to rafter in this cavernous space, trying to knock the little bastard out of the air with hand towels. We clobbered it a couple of times, good.
Sadly, we could never locate where it fell before the chickadee, Michael Meyers-like, would rise up and escape to some high perch where it was out of range of our flying linen.
Forgive me, I haven’t explained why we needed the chickadee. It has to do with a dog. Moose the dog.
Before we embark on another twisty-turny adventure centered around America’s best-loved restaurant cum marketing agency, let me take this opportunity to thank you, the readers of this blog, for your continued interest.
You know what a hot mess this blog is. And, if you don’t, here’s a quick fill-in:
Smugglers’ Inn is a restaurant and sometimes advertising agency located in a stand-alone building in the Northtown Shopping Center complex, which straddles the communities of Blaine and Spring Lake Park, Minnesota. Since shortly after the term “Chinese virus” began trending, our restaurant has been shuttered. I, Smug’s night manager, along with head chef, Jorge and Jorge’s nephew, Jorge Jr., our (cough) “landscaper” have been living on site, seeing to it that the premises remain
secure. And no perishable food goes to waste.
With me so far? I hope so because this next part is embarrassing enough without having to repeat it.
As Smug’s night manager, it falls on me to see that bills are paid and that a good relationship with our vendors is maintained. Functions I have diligently performed when I’ve had money coming in from the restaurant or on those (admittedly infrequent) times when we’ve had a paying ad project in the house.
With the restaurant closed and our multi-tasking staff disbanded, I decided to do what so many other small businesses were doing when faced with a similar dilemma.
I stopped paying bills.
Then, I said goodbye to my damage deposit and moved in with Father Smugglers and Mother Inn. Jorge and Jorge Jr. had been living in Jorge’s RV, so I invited them to move in, too. Did I mention Jorge is an exceptional cook?
Things went well until they didn’t, which seems to be a pattern in our universe. It was the chickadee that got us busted.
During the warmer months, birds are forever flying in through our oversized double doors. After a few minutes, they leave the way they came, either on their own or because a bunch of available Smuggies form a line and shoo them towards freedom.
The chickadee had come in through a side door, which Jorge had propped open to let in some fresh air since the temperature that day had been a near-tropical 34F. Because were absolutely NOT supposed to be occupying our building, we didn’t want to swing open those front doors and announce to the world that there were squatters in Smugglers’ Inn.
Instead, we let the thing flap around, making several half-assed attempts to chase it back to the side door which is at the end of a wheelchair ramp that is mostly obscured by a hedge.
Did I mention that, in addition to being an exceptional cook, Jorge Senior has the calm, even temper of a South American drug lord? When a chickadee dropping landed on Jorge’s pomaded hair and Jorge had responded by hurling a one-pound pewter plate straight up like some lethal frisbee, I decided that the risk of being discovered was less than the risk of being decapitated.
So, there we were, banging on pots, trying to herd the chickadee out through those big, wide-open front doors when a Mall security guard sticks his bullet-shaped head in and said, “Who’s there?”
Jorge, whose blood was still up, said some not-very nice things about the security guard’s mother. I tried my best to smooth things over, but I knew that there was no way Mr. Mall Cop wasn’t going to tell his bosses that there were people living in an officially closed Smugglers Inn. The security company would pass this news to the shopping center, technically our landlords. Who weren’t getting their rent.
I acted quickly. The first thing I did was shut the front doors, trapping the chickadee inside. I wasn’t worried about getting evicted. Any eviction notice would have to be served by an officer of the Coon Rapids Sheriff’s Department and they, like sheriff’s departments around the state, had declared a moratorium on serving eviction notices.
I was worried about the power company. People’s Gas and Electric had been pretty good about accepting my excuses instead of payments on our unpaid balance. If the landlord told them that the Smugglers’ Inn was an unoccupied commercial building, we’d be in the dark with no heat.
Did I mention this is Minnesota? It snows in April.
Things looked bleak, but Smug’s skeleton crew had one ace up our collective, puffed sleeve: Moose’s Law.
You thought I would never get back to that, did you? Well, sorry to disappoint you, because here is the rest of that story.
The name, “Moose’s Law” comes from a beagle, great Dane mix that froze to death when his elderly owner neglected to pay her bill and found her heat shut off in the middle of a sub-zero cold snap. Moose, in a show of canine fidelity, froze standing in place as if guarding his mistress.
In truth, the dog had been posed in this position by one Brian Ingalls, 13, whose parents thought that shoveling the stoop and sidewalk for the doughty lady next door would build character.
When young Master Brian didn’t hear Moose’s familiar barking, he entered the unlocked home and found the animal on its side, frozen solid against the front door. He called 911 and had time to take many pics of Moose propped up on all fours and post one online before the police and paramedics arrived. Our seating hostess’s stepbrother had received one of the pics, which is why I know the facts.
The dog-sicle pic went viral. It was too graphic for Minneapolis Star or the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, but it made the cover of the Anoka County Shopper, the Coon Rapids Advertiser, the Blaine Water Tower News and even Autotrader.
The Blaine City Council hastily passed an ordinance stating that from now on, the power company could not, under any circumstances, shut off the power to a residence if that action might endanger the life of a pet.
Dubbed “Moose’s Law” it had all the legal gravitas of a stick of gum, but it was a public relations disaster for the power company who had, to their credit, sent agents to the residence in question on three occasions in an effort to sign the old lady up for a federal assistance program that would have paid her heating bill and most, if not all of her outstanding balance as well.
Moose’s owner, it should be pointed out, died also. Of course, no one cares a fig about human casualties; genuine sympathy is reserved for animals. Our Smugglers’ Inn advertising division exploited this very fact in a series of ads and posters, visible on this site, for The Uptown Clinic. The ads suck you in with pictures of abused animals. It’s only when you read the copy that you learn you are being asked to report incidents of child abuse as readily if you had seen someone throttle a pet.
We did not have a pet. So, we would have to make one.
Catching the chickadee was accomplished by using a cardboard box propped up with a cocktail stirrer over a dish of water and some chopped filbert nuts. Sitting on the bar, the trap looked like something from a Roadrunner cartoon, but the chickadee was either so hungry or so thirsty that it quickly landed and continued eating and drinking even when we pulled the string that pulled the stirrer away and the box dropped, trapping the animal inside.
You likely have a little pot of saffron sitting on your spice rack. We have two-quart containers of the stuff. It is a key ingredient in our rice pilaf. And anything else that looks better bright yellow.
Like a chickadee.
The clever among you have figured out where this is going. For everyone else, we are making ourselves a get-out-of-gas bill card. A canary, in other words.
We debated what adhesive to use with the saffron. Jorge and I voted for the 3M spray adhesive, but when the can that had been sitting on a shelf in the pantry proved to be empty, we let Jorge Jr. have his way and make a liquid paste out of corn starch and water that, to Jorge’s and my surprise, worked gangbusters for sticking the bright yellow spice to the previously grey and black chickadee. The head was all wrong for a canary, but if anyone got that close to our creation, the ruse would be exposed.
Jorge Jr. has been practicing canary warbles and Jorge Senior has shown a talent I didn’t know he possessed and woven a passable wicker bird cage from actual grape vines used in the silk flower trellises that flank our coatroom and the seating hostess’s stand. For my part, I have improvised a butterfly net from a metal coat hanger and a laundry bag duct-taped to a mop handle. When they come, I will be chasing a bright yellow blur around the restaurant, calling its name.
“Tweety! Tweety!”
Wait, is that…? Yes! Another knock at the door. Junior has begun his warbling. Wish us luck. If this works, I swear I’ll put the next of these long entries into an audio file.
“Tweety!”
