How I saved the entire world

We have been tremendously busy at work, which is hard to feel bad about when you're in the newspaper business. Yesterday was a crazy day for classified ads. And it wasn't even a deadline day. Garage sales, rentals, random junk, the phone just kept ringing. It made it a bit difficult for me to write this little piece on some guys and their canoe (that's a story for another time), but I'm getting kind of good at writing in fits and starts. I have an article in this week's paper that I never did have time to read all the way through before submitting it--and I submitted it only because I had to. Deadlines are not the most forgiving of things. Neither is writing at the front desk. (And I still haven't read it, but that's just because I'm afraid.)

Wait, what was I talking about?

Oh, right. Here's how I saved the world: Around 3 p.m. I got a call about a lost parrot. The lady was hoping it would be a free ad, but when I told her it was actually a $10, two week ad, she didn't hesitate. I always kind of feel bad about that $10 charge, whatever, we got down to business. People call in lost pets all the time, and it's heartbreaking. You've got this beloved family member wandering about in the wilderness* and you just want it back. Dogs generally get found; cats are a little harder. Birds? I didn't have high hopes for this lady, but I could understand the need to do something.

Source

I write an ad about where the bird was lost and how badly he wants to come home. I take the lady's credit card info, wish her luck, and go back to my canoe story.

The phone rings not ten minutes later, and it's this kid saying, uh, we found this bird... and I was like, WHERE ARE YOU?, and the kid told me where they'd found it, and I was like, you have GOT to be kidding me. Let me get you a phone number.

Because dude! That was the bird!

I figured I'd give them a half hour to make arrangements, and then call the lady to tell her I was voiding her credit card charge, but she called me. She was so excited because someone had just called her, and I was like, yeah... and started telling her about the phone call and giving out her number, and it apparently had not occurred to her that the paper had something to do with this because she was shocked. So she's thanking me profusely, and I tell her yay, you found your bird! and it was all rather heartwarming.

After I hung up I remembered a lady coming into the office maybe this past spring with a parrot on her shoulder--wearing a cone, that was a sight--and a puppy on a leash, but the puppy had not been trained to sit on her shoulder, so it was just on the floor. (Ha.) She was walking all over the place and the bird just stayed on her shoulder. I wonder if THAT was the lady. I wonder if the bird was out of his cone and what made him decide to take off.

It's a mystery.

But anyway, that's how I saved the world. Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time.

And then I took a call from this guy who was ticked off about a photo we'd run on the front page, and since the reporter who took the thing wasn't in, he decided to just yell at me a little bit. (Well, it was more like a condescending rant then yelling, let's be accurate in our descriptions here.)

You can't win them all.

*Or neighborhood. Whatever.