The Case of the Mysterious Bird Feeder Surprise
In which I find a strange item in an even stranger place. Plus a bonus mystery and a new Inconspicuous News Roundup.
Editor’s Note: This post includes a short video clip that is essential to the story. Since you can’t play the video in the emailed version of the post, I strongly urge you to read the web version or the app version, not the email version. Enjoy! — Paul
I like birds, so I have a suction-cup bird feeder attached to a window in the front section of my apartment. That’s the part of the house where I usually spend most of the day, so I have a clear view of the feeder while I work. (As you can see above, Waffles and Biscuit also enjoy it.)
Last summer I reorganized a few things and turned one of my apartment’s back rooms into a sort of auxiliary living room, so I installed a bird feeder back there as well. But I didn’t end up spending much time in that room as I expected, so I stopped refilling the back-room feeder with bird seed after a couple of months. I should have taken the additional step of removing the feeder from the window, but I was lazy and never bothered. So the feeder has been sitting there, empty, for months.
Or so I thought. But the other day I was puttering with something in the back room and happened to glance up at the feeder. It looked like there was something in it, so I went over to the window to take a closer look.
I didn’t have the wherewithal to document what happened next in real time, so what I’m about to show you is a staged reenactment. But I promise you that it is 100% faithful to what actually transpired, with no embellishments added or liberties taken, and the one line of dialogue is reproduced verbatim. Cue the tape:
That’s right: A granola bar — specifically, a Gefen Oats & Dark Chocolate Crunchy Granola Bar — had somehow ended up in my bird feeder. It was unopened and seemed to be near-perfect condition. How had it gotten there, and how long had it been there before I noticed it?