I was awakened early one summer morning by a “tweetie-tweet-tweet-tweet – thunk!” directly outside our bedroom window, repeated over and over again.  I finally got up and peeked through the blind.  There was a yellow warbler on the outside window ledge.  He would sing his song, then fly up toward the top corner of the window – and bump into the glass!

Our bedroom was on the west side of the house facing the street.  A previous resident had put reflective plastic film on the inside of the window to reduce visibility from the street.  We could see out, but anyone outside could not see in.  There was a large pine tree close to the window that was clearly reflected in it.  This little yellow warbler spent three hours trying to fly up into that pine tree reflection and bumping into the window glass.

The whole performance was quite interesting to Panda, our cat, so we set a chair beside the window for her.  When the bird would sit and sing on the window ledge just inches away Panda would pounce and go thunk! against the window glass.  Neither the cat nor the bird hit the glass hard enough to do themselves any harm, but both found it a very frustrating experience.

How often do we bump into our illusions and find it hard to comprehend what is wrong?