An Exciting Morning but not so much about Ray

Wow what an exciting morning! I got up early because I thought I heard Ray moving around and needed to let him out. It was only 6:30, so I laid down on the sectional sofa in the family room. I knew that if I went back upstairs, Ray would either whine and wake Gregg or get into my knitting stuff again (I'm moving it all upstairs). 
Ray came inside, curled up on the other side of the sofa, and went to sleep. I dozed for another hour then decided to sneak back upstairs for some more sleep. I had just made it between the sheets of the bed when the whimpering started. I tried to ignore it but then it stopped, there was a thump, and some rustling noises. I hopped back out of bed and ran downstairs; nothing much, just a big, plastic container filled with plastic bags which trailed from the dining room into the front hall. 
I heard Gregg get up while I was scooping them up and stuffing them back into the container.  

I ran back upstairs to get my glasses and didn't close the stairgate behind me because I wasn't going to be long. I heard a 'BAH' from Gregg and walked into the hallway to find Ray in the cat's room. He's really fast on those stairs for a blind dog that, until Thursday, was afraid of stairs. 

Gregg went off to the grocery to get some bagels for breakfast and Ray and I went out back to play tug-of-war with a Trader Joe's bag. It makes a great crackly noise and has handles for me to hang onto. Ray was having a great time shredding the bag when all of a sudden a Bluejay tumbled out of the sky and landed all askew in a rosebush. The rosebush is planted in our neighbors yard but is adjacent to our five-foot-tall wooden fence and tops it by about a foot. The bird was thrashing about and making quite a racket. Ray and I ran over to the fence and I saw that the bird was really stuck. It was a baby, but had all of its feathers. This must have been his leave-the-nest day. What a way to start a life. 

I tried to disengage the bird but it seemed to be either impaled on a thorn or stuck between a couple of thorny stems. The rose thorns were big, the bird was fluttering, and I kept getting jabbed. Ray, being the helpful dog that he is, stayed right by my side. I think he was trying to get a good 'look' at the bird but he could have been trying to eat it. I ran back into the house grabbed a pair of gloves (ok - knit gloves turned out to be a really bad idea but they were first at hand) and ran back out to detangle the bird from it's thorny peril. 

I managed to get the bird unstuck, but it just tumbled farther down into the rosebush totally beyond my reach. I stripped off my bathrobe and quickly hopped the fence. I disentangled the bird a second time and carried it over to a low-lying tree branch. It seemed to be hyperventilating a bit, it's beak open. I put it on the branch and smoothed out it's feathers, watched it for a minute to make sure it wasn't going to fall off, then hopped back over the fence just as Gregg came back from the grocery. 

I told him what had happened and showed him where the bird was perched. He went out to take a closer look when all of a sudden I heard him yell.
"The bird flew over into our yard!" Gregg shouted.
Ray was tossing back and forth along the fence trying to find the Jay. I ran outside, grabbed his collar and closed him off in the kitchen. I went and got my gloves again. 
"I'll climb over the fence and you hand him to me," I said to Gregg. "I'll move him farther into the yard next door." 
Gregg went and got his gloves, took the bird and handed it over the fence. I went to the middle of the yard found another low-lying branch, placed the bird gently on it, hopped back over the fence, and let Ray out of the kitchen. Gregg put a hand on his heart. 
"Too much excitement this early in the morning," he said.