SOMETIMES only raw courage will do – and that’s what it took the day the birds invaded the house.
It started on Sunday morning when a startled starling appeared in our bathroom, and my wife and youngest son, Max, skilfully managed to shoo it out of the window.
Ok, it happens occasionally. Wayward birds come in through an open window. No big deal. But then it happened again – only it was two starlings this time.
They flew around upstairs until my unflappable wife was again able to let them out. This time, having had to wipe up starling droppings for the second time in an hour, she decided to shut all the windows.
I’d been out all morning, so I missed the drama. Otherwise, I’d have dealt with the birds and cleaned up the poo. You know I would.
Anyway, after Sunday lunch, I was catching up on work in my office when I heard a commotion in the bathroom, and there was yet another starling, pecking at the frosted glass of the closed window.
Naturally, I ran to tell my wife and, before I was able to beat her to it, she’d flown up the stairs to arrange another escape.
The question was how the hell had it happened again with all windows and doors shut? It was a mystery of Hitchcock-esque proportions that several family members pondered as they gathered on the landing.
Our daughter-in-law, Kitty, on a weekend visit from London, went outside to study the avian activity around the house before proffering the swiftly dismissed, and quite frankly, ridiculously far-fetched theory that the birds might have been going down the stench pipe poking out of the roof. I mean, who in their right mind would do that?
Meanwhile, back upstairs, Jack was desperate to have a relaxing bath, but our six-feet-tall 31-year-old was too scared to take the plunge while the possibility of another feathered intruder remained a live threat. Mind you, he did notice a panel had worked loose, leaving a narrow gap between the bathroom floor and the bottom of a cupboard.
Though it didn’t look big enough for even a budgie to squeeze through, I intrepidly volunteered to check it out. It was reminiscent of the time, when the kids were little, I ventured into the loft – dressed in hat, gloves, scarf, overcoat, and a sieve over my face – to investigate a wasps’ nest
This time, without any protection, but displaying the aforementioned raw courage, I laid down on the floor so I could peer through the gap.
It was then that I came beak-to-beak with a fledgling, looking straight at me with a terrifying expression, not unlike Jack Nicholson glaring, manically, through that broken door in The Shining.
As our eyes met, inches apart, the starling and I both let out a simultaneous squawk – me possibly louder than the baby bird.
Despite it all, I’m proud to say I stayed calm enough to reinstate the loose panel, then reinforce it with enough electrician’s tape to thwart a pterodactyl.
For the rest of the breeding season, the adult starlings will just have to get in and out through the roof eaves to feed their young.
As for me, you might have thought I’d earned high praise for my heroics in getting to the bottom of the mystery.
Instead, I got a rollicking from my wife for taping up the cupboard too thoroughly – blocking vital access to the spare toilet rolls.
“You just never think things through, do you?” she chirped.
