Sometimes you just shouldn’t taunt Mother Nature. Last week I glibly wrote to someone that we Los Angelenos don’t even roll out of bed for any earthquake weaker than a 4.5. Fast forward to Friday around 9pm, when I was in the middle of preparing for a big event the morning after, the plantation shutters in my living room began to rattle a bit, not so much from any wind outside but more like from some sort of pelting rain. I say pelting specifically because it almost sounded like sand pebbles hitting against a wood panel. But this was all really odd since we are going through a major drought right now. A few seconds later the ground simply rolled. My furkids took off like bats out of hell and then the floor swayed from side to side. The heavy TV shook on its stand as if it were some flimsy daisy. About thirty very long seconds into this unsettling sensation of the earth rocking and rolling, I tried to recall where my earthquake kit was. And wondered if my phone was fully charged.

This was one of the more serious earthquakes I’ve been through in recent years; it clocked in at 5.1 on the Richter scale. The good news is that there was no significant damage. The bad news is that we had another strong aftershock the day after, a 4.1. And both of these shakes followed a not so small one in Westwood a week before. Needless to say, we are all a bit nervous around here. But life will go on this week and we’ll put the fear back in check where it belongs until the Big One shows up. That’s just the reality of living on a fault line.

But since you have all been on the road to Hermès adoption with me for some two years now, I should confess that maybe the rumbling was not just caused by the release of energy in the Earth’s crust creating seismic waves (or Mother Nature taking a deep breath and then sneezing) but something more… shall we say, sartorially conspiring? As in when two birds collide? Are you shaking your head from all this confusion and asking yourself if maybe something did fall on my head during the earthquake? What if I showed you this:

Yes, my dear readers, that big event I was preparing for when the 5.1 struck was the adoption of my ostrich Birkin. So when a Larkie and an ostrich (or two birds) collide, it’s what I suspect to be defined in physics as inelastic collision.

Inelastic collision occurs “between bodies in which the total kinetic energy of the bodies is not conserved. In an inelastic collision, the total momentum of the two bodies remains the same, but some of the initial kinetic energy is transformed into heat energy internal to the bodies, used up in deforming the bodies, or radiated away in some other fashion. Inelastic collisions, such as the collision of two balls of clay, tend to result in the slowing and sometimes the joining together of the colliding bodies.” OK, reading that just made me really happy to not be in a high school physics class anymore, but I think there’s some truth to my conspiracy analogy.

As soon as this Birkin collided into my trembling palms, there was definitely a joining of bodies, matters, or whatever science wants to call it. Kinetic energy exploded. Heat energy was off the charts. The earth shook, then my heart followed as an aftershock. I’ve found my bird, my holy grail–my mini-me if I were a purse. Is that like some kind of Big Bang theory and an alternate universe where we all carry chic handbags 24/7 was just created? OK, I’m getting all my high school classes confused now. Good thing I did not choose a career in science or we’d all be in trouble.

So thanks for accompanying me on my pilgrimage for my holy grails, first with the crocodile Kelly and now the ostrich Birkin…

I dare not say what could possibly be waiting down the road from here. The luck I’m feeling is already more than I can bear. But why not dream huge when the whole universe is out there?

Before I sign off (and by signing off I mean going back to ogle the grey bird), I should provide some photographic evidence of what it really means when two birds collide:

I’m going to guess that rumble was at least a 7.5 on the Larkster scale.