Sally Breslin: My Life: I LEARNED TO BE MORE CAREFUL ABOUT WHAT I WISH FOR!

They say to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it, and believe me, last week I learned the true meaning of those words.

For those of you who are longtime readers of this blog, you’re probably familiar with the fact that the one thing I’ve always wished to see at my bird feeder is a cardinal. Over the years, I have done everything short of donning a cardinal costume and performing a mating dance in an effort to attract one of the beautiful red birds, with no success. I’ve even splurged on the finest Cardinal Chow – which the 20 squawking crows that showed up really enjoyed.

Well, the other day, I was in the laundry room, which is the nearest room to the attached garage, when I kept hearing an unfamiliar “thunk,” “thunk” sound coming from the other side of the wall. Curious, I opened the door to the garage and looked around.

There, repeatedly flying into the garage window, trying to get inside, was the bird of my dreams – a gorgeous, bright-red cardinal. I was certain, however, it soon would become a gorgeous, dead, bright-red cardinal if it continued to keep smashing its face into the glass that way.

So although it really pained me, I went outside and shooed the bird away.

That night, I was telling one of my friends about the cardinal, and she said, “Legend has it that a visit from a cardinal is actually the spirit of a dead loved one returning to let you know you’re being watched over.”

I immediately began to wonder which of my deceased loved ones hadn’t been too swift, because this bird definitely wasn’t the Einstein of the cardinal world.

The next morning, I took out the trash. When I went back into the garage, I heard flapping overhead. My garage’s rafters are over 10 feet high, and when I looked up, there was the cardinal, sitting on one of them and looking down at me as if to say, “Ha! You left the garage door open for three whole minutes! Now who’s the one who’s not too swift?”

I spent the rest of the morning frantically trying to get the cardinal out of my garage because, for one thing, I have some furniture stored in there that wouldn’t look particularly attractive with bird poop all over it – and neither would my car. And if the cardinal decided to stay in there permanently, I feared it would end up dying, and I didn’t want to be responsible for the death of a bird that supposedly was representing the spirit of someone who already was dead.

No matter what I did, however, the bird seemed to be mocking me. I jumped up and down and made weird noises while waving a roof rake at it, hoping to scare it into flying back outside. I even went to You Tube and recorded an audio of a cardinal chirping, then kept playing it just outside the open garage door, hoping the sound would lure the bird outside to meet one of his buddies. But all I succeeded in doing was attracting the neighbor’s cat.

I thought about leaving a trail of food leading out of the garage, but then thought against it when I realized the trail of food might lead some other creature, like a squirrel or a chipmunk, INTO my garage, and that was the last thing I needed.

Finally, out of sheer desperation, I Googled, “How do I get a cardinal out of the rafters in my garage?”

The most popular consensus seemed to be to darken all of the garage windows and then open the garage door. The cardinal, or just about every other kind of bird, according to Google, would be attracted to the only source of light in the garage and fly toward it – kind of like a moth to a porch light.

There are four windows and an additional two glass panels on the big overhead doors in my garage. Rounding up enough cardboard to block out all of that glass took me over two hours. In the meantime, I left both of the overhead doors open, hoping the cardinal would suffer a sudden attack of homesickness and fly out.

But all the bird continued to do was fly from one rafter to another and then pause to look down at me...and (I was pretty sure) chuckle with fiendish glee.

After I managed to completely darken the garage, I opened only the small side-door, thinking it would keep the garage much darker than if I opened one of the big overhead doors. Sure enough, the minute I opened that side door, out flew the cardinal. Quickly, I slammed the door shut and locked it, then sagged against it and breathed a sigh of relief.

I hate to admit it, but after that, I’d had just about my fill of cardinals for a while, and I honestly didn’t care if I ever saw another one, even if it did represent one of my deceased loved ones.

The very next morning, I heard a banging noise coming from the garage once again, so I grabbed my camera and headed out there to investigate. Here’s what I recorded (keep your eye on the window)...

Give me strength!

# # #