things that go bump in the night

This morning two local lads knocked on the door and said “do you know there’s a bird in your house? we think it’s a starling”
They were right, I reckon it must have come down the chimney as all the doors were shut and it had been about 6 hours since any of them were opened, the lads heard it fly into the front wondow as they walked past and were worried it was going to break the window.
Luckily it flew out the window on the second attempt with some coaxing and thanks to the lads who went and got a fishing net to help catch it! the surprising thing is it didn’t leave any mess behind, all it did was knock a couple of cards off the fireplace.
Such a surreal thing i know did happen but feels like it can’t have when you looked back. The odds on the bird coming down the chimney must be pretty high and i have pixar style images of two sitting on the chimney breast and one pushing the other in :chuckle:

It has happened a few times in our house since the council put a special cowling over the chimney pot when the central heating was installed in the 70s. The birds take it as a shelter, lose their footing and fall down inside. The only problem is, that now we have the central heating, all the fireplaces have been boxed in with hardboard and we have to dismantle them to get the poor devils out. They make a hell of a racket when they’re in there and it doesn’t half scare the cats :D. There is some nesting material in there as well, so some silly bird has thought about nest building, but so far no egg shells, so I guess they changed their minds :slight_smile:

That was lucky.

The morning before a property inspection in a rented house I found a pigeon had fallen down the chimmney and spread an even layer of soot, s*** and feathers everywhere it went.
Eventually it knocked itself out cold on the kitchen window and was lobbed outside but that was my best excuse for being late for work, Birdstrike!