suicidal cardinal

this past weekend our good deed was to go to the retreat center where the urban refuge was retreating, and help our friends kat and dirk with the kids' ministry on sunday morning. We both ended up with plans for Saturday evening, but figured that driving up late Saturday was better than driving up early Sunday, so that's what we did. They gave us VIP rooms (they had their own bathrooms) and it was pretty fun to push the bunkbeds together, almost like sleeping in a fort.

It wasn't a really great night's sleep, the room alternated between too hot or too cold, and the bed was generally uncomfortable. I woke up before sunrise and kept waking up constantly after that. I decided around 7:30 that it was light out and I had had enough of trying to stay asleep, so I got up and started getting ready for the day. Not 10 minutes later I heard a noise at our window.

THUNK.

It was like someone threw a stone at it from outside.

We hadn't told anyone which rooms we were staying in, and Seth and I really don't know too many folks from Urban, so that was quite a long shot. I ignored it, but just a couple minutes later, there it was again, this big THUNK. I was curious enough to go over to the window and open the little curtain and saw the red of a cardinal as it took off from the window ledge outside.

That was odd. Some bird trying to crash land into our window...ok....

Kept getting ready, I was about to leave and have my quiet time down the hall when I heard it again

THUNK.

The cardinal again? Seriously? Is he doing this on purpose? I peeked under the curtain and saw him there, actually looking into our window, not unlike if he was expecting us to come outside and follow him to some magical parallel world. I watched him for a minute or two, but he didn't do anything else, so I just left him and went about my business outside of our room, so I don't know if he came flying at the window again or not.

I did hear from Seth later that morning, apparently he had been hearing the bird every 15 minutes or so come up and fly into the window. We never quite figured out what he was doing. If he was suicidal, either his tendencies were only very mild, or he just was bad at it.