The Bird Man.

Even though it makes my very logical husband roll his eyes, I must confess that I believe very strongly in good omens. Some things are strong indicators of what’s to come, as far as I’m concerned.

In high school, our bus drove past a farm that occupied some very densely-treed rolling hills. It had a front pasture (near the road) and a back pasture (back behind a tree line, and visible only during the autumn and winter months) and a tiny white house in the middle. My friend Dave and I, sitting in the furthest back seat of the bus, would press our faces up to the windows and look very hard for a flash of the “good omen”.

On a good-omen-day – one that was likely to feature happy moments at school – the farm would have their cows out in the front field. That was the good omen. See, the cows themselves were the magic – weird-looking in a completely awesome way, even to a bunch of kids from farmland. The Dutch Belted are not exactly common creatures and, well, imagine driving past a field filled with them for the first time. SO COOL.

We’d pretty much squeal with glee on seeing them out there. In the winter, just a glimpse of them in the back pasture was equally acceptable. We knew it was going to be a good day if we saw our “banded cows”.

(In our last year of high school, when we had driver’s licenses, we actually drove to the farm to finally ask what kind of cows they were. The farmers seemed perplexed to find us there, all awkward and giddy, but they humoured us and filled us in.)

My “good omens” didn’t end when I graduated and moved away from the area. I’ve attached a happiness guarantee to such things as pigeons hanging out in certain areas, a particular person being in a specific spot along my commute, and, of course, any wiener dog sighting.

Some days, however, there are no wiener dogs out and about. There are no chipmunks sitting on metal hippos on my front porch. There are no squirrels or birds walking down the sidewalk – pretending to be people (something that makes me laugh ’til I cry. It’s unbelievably hilarious to me when wild animals walk down the sidewalk. It’s equally hilarious when birds walk around instead of flying.)

This requires me to look around for other good omens – things that make me smile or seem particularly cheerful. That’s right, I LOOK for good omens, I don’t wait for them to reveal themselves. You have to keep your eyes open to the magic of the world, y’know.

My newest good omen, added to my stock, is The Bird Man.

I first sighted him riding his bike a block or two after I dropped Coffee off at work one morning. As a former cyclist of the “very serious” sort, I immediately check out the calves of anyone on a bike, then thighs, then the bike itself, and occasionally make my way up the person’s body to notice who they are or something else about them. This man had unspeakably sharp-muscled calves, indicating a serious dedication to that bike!

The next thing I noticed was his very, very long dreadlocks (I love dreadlocks!) that hung down past the seat on his bike. They were gorgeous.

I didn’t make it to the bike, however, because it was then that I noticed the birds.

He had at least five birds in his hair – riding happily along with him. I noted one that was a lime green colour, and the others were shades of white and yellow and grey. I was so stunned by this sight that I couldn’t take in anything else, other than the fact that they weren’t tied into his hair, weren’t flapping to get away, and seemed quite content to.. ride along on his hair.

Traffic was moving, I couldn’t stop, I didn’t have my camera (and my cell phone camera isn’t good while I’m moving).. so I drove my stunned self home with a huge grin on my face. I told Coffee what I had seen and I couldn’t stop grinning about it. Bird Man!

I decided I’d have to ask Kelly if she knew him (she knows all the fun people in KW, it seems, even though she doesn’t live here).

This morning, as Coffee was getting out of the car, I looked in my sideview mirror and saw The Bird Man approaching on his bike. I made shrieky noises at Coffee and gestured wildly and conveyed, somehow, that it WAS HIM. Coffee said something along the lines of, “Whoah.” and I giggled.

The Bird Man rode by, birds in his hair looking happy in the sunshine, and now today is going to be awesome.

(And I finally emailed Kelly to ask if she knows him – because now I know I wasn’t hallucinating.)