Once or twice a year, a hummingbird will fly into my office. Easy for them to do, I feed them on the porch outside and on nice days the double doors are left open. It's problematic because once inside, they can't find their way out; they fly from fixed window to fixed window in the open second story, never discovering the first floor open door they came in. Hummingbirds require about half their body weight in nectar every day, there are not that many flowers inside my office, so the drama is a short story.

The first move is to isolate the cats and dogs, if a hummer hits the floor, Sophie the Mouser will have it in a breath. Then it becomes a waiting game, the bird will spend hours searching for an escape. Chasing after it with a net will prove fruitless, full of energy and panic, a hummer can smoke the futile reaction time of homo sapiens.

After a few troubled hours, for both of us, the exhausted bird will drop at he base of a window. Or, more interestingly, it will perch and enter into a torpor, a state of suspended animation, which is a necessary thing for animals with hearts that beat 900 times a minute. In a torpor, you can ease up to the hummingbird and pluck her (usually) off a ledge like a cherry off a tree. After I get them outside, I feed them some hummingbird soup (made from nectar) to get them on their way.