the great saturday night swindle

uncomfortable night. i ate mac and cheese before bed, so i guess it's the equivalent of dreams of a rarebit fiend, sort of. when i came downstairs, i went into the kitchen and turned on the light. my house sits on a hill, so the windows in some of the rooms look out on a wall about 5 feet high and the hill itself, which was cut to situate the house. anyway, when i looked out the window there was a young deer standing on top of the wall, less than ten feet from me. she saw me but didn't act frightened, just kept eating the greenery. i watched her for about half an hour. when i was little, one of the things that i wanted more than anything was to see deer and i never did. now, they come up to the windows, even with the dogs here.
it's strange living here, so close to nature and so close to the city. the property that i'm on backs into a park and on one side is virgin forest that extends about ten miles around the hillside into another very large park. i see so many animals and birds.
i told one of the girls at work my cardinal story: last year, in the spring, i was driving home from work at about 7am. i was coming thru an area that is public housing, sort of rough, when i noticed a cardinal in the oncoming lane across from me, just sitting in the street. there was a car coming and as it went by, less than six inches from the bird, i could see in my mirror that the bird didn't even move. i turned around and went back and the bird still sat there and let me pick it up without much fuss. it was young, probably just out of the nest. i picked it up and took it to a tree on the side of the street and sat it on a branch and started to walk away when the bird made its first sound, a really distressed screech. i turned around and, i swear, the bird was looking me in the eye. it was this weird, cross-species contact that i've never had with a bird before. i went back and picked it up, again, and took it to my car, unsure what to do. the bird sat in my lap, totally unalarmed. by the time i got home, i had decided that it would have to take its chances on its own, so i took it into the woods across the street and sat it on a branch in one of the trees where it seemed content. i went back about an hour later and it was gone. every few days after that, i would go back and look for it and, being who i am, i'd talk to it and say that i hoped it was alright.
fast forward a month or two and i'm sitting at the computer, as i am now, with all of the windows open. i looked up and there was a cardinal, hovering like a hummingbird, in the doorway between the living and dining room. i was so surprised i just said, "oh, you can't be in here", at which the bird flew into the kitchen and out the window, obviously knowing its way.
now, i'm not saying it is the same bird...altho, it might be. maybe it came to let me know that it was alright and had survived. i'd really like to think so. and it was also amazing, there were young cardinals outside the back door that year, over and over, being watched by the mother bird while they foraged. i never saw cardinals there, before, it being so enclosed.