Bird Incident

[coalescent]

So there I am, making dinner. Filling the kettle with water, listening to music, as you do. From behind me there is a mewing, and then a thunk sound, so I turn around. Behind me is my parents' cat, sitting neatly in the middle of a flurry of feathers. She's wearing one of those 'who, me? No, you don't want me. Nothing to see here,' expressions that cats do so well.

I look around the kitchen. Nothing to be seen.

I walk from the sink over to the hob, and start cooking my pasta. After a few moments, the cat follows me over and starts mewing insistently. I look around: Still nothing. I decide to clean up the feathers.

The cat continues to mew. As I get up from sweeping feathers (which is a remarkably difficult task; try it sometime), I see it: On the work surface, there is a bag of hula hoops, and on the bag of hula hoops, there is a small sparrow, clearly frightened out of its wits. The cat is sitting next to the unit, looking at me expectantly.

The cat and I exchange glances.

I move towards the bird, and - just like that - it leaps into the air, and flies out the open door. It is closely followed by the cat.

I go back to sweeping the feathers and cooking my dinner.

In other news, Angel S4 lays the smack down on Buffy S7, and all is right with the world.

Comments

[hddod.livejournal.com]

You're the second person on my friends list who's had a bird in house incident this week.

I sympathise with you over trying to try to sweep up feathers, though -- I keep birdies as pets...

[hawleygriffen.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, much familiar with the cat-bird-in-house incidents. This is not unusual.

And laying the smackdown on Buffy?

"Average vote for Buffy episodes: 3.706 (13)
Average vote for Angel episodes: 3.884 (12)"

That's not laying the smackdown, that's barely a gentle tap on the shoulder.

[danmilburn.livejournal.com]

His favoured statistic was that out of the top 10 episodes, 7 of them were 'Angel'.

Of course, attempting to read anything into these polls is rather silly. One might just as well conclude that it means 'Buffy' fans have higher standards. :D

Re:

[hawleygriffen.livejournal.com]

*cackles at thought of this annoying niall and quite right, too* Yes, it might just mean that, indeed. These angel fans, giving out high scores just for any old thing, you know, it's scandalous.

dan = rock

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

One might just as well conclude that it means 'Buffy' fans have higher standards. :D

Yes. 'Cause it's not like, y'know, the two voting populations have a 90% overlap, or anything... :-)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

You're probably right. What we really need is someone who knows stats to tell us whether an 0.2 difference between two sets of around 400 votes is significant or not.

The more interesting point, given that the historical range in which seasons are rated is between about 3.6 and 3.9, is that Angel is climbing steadily towards the position of highest rated season on record, whereas Buffy, um, isn't.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

And we'll not mention any vote rigging that might have taken place...

[tizzle-b.livejournal.com]

That was scrapped and all votes restored to their previous goals when it was quite clear that it would've taken round 5s for most episodes from you two in order to upset ODC with the averages.

And it would've been revised as soon as it had been posted anyway - it was more the initial impact and not the long-term thing.

So no rigging :P

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Shite. That means I really HAVE lost all critical faculties then.

Re:

[hawleygriffen.livejournal.com]

What we really need is someone who knows starts to tell us whether an 0.2 difference..... is significant or not.


Really, I should know how to do that. Did enough work on that side. But, it's just *recalls nightmare statistics exams* make.... them.... go.... away..... *whimpers* There were these two/three-way mixed ANOVAs - the scariest stats formulas in social science ever.

heeheehee

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

Thanks for telling us. Just to clean up the mental picture ... what does your parents' cat look like?

Re: heeheehee

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

She's a tabby. Her name is Tas. She has a tendency to attack anything that moves, except my mum.