Day 2 of homeownership: air conditioner breaks
Day 8 of homeownership: basement floods with sewage
Day 10 of homeownership: birds discovered squawking and flapping in the ceiling
So that brings us to today, day 11.
Chris and I woke up early this morning anticipating the wild life rescue team's arrival to remove the apparent nest of newly-hatched baby birds that their dear mother created for them above our ceiling through a tiny slit in between the gutters and the siding of our house. Chris got out of bed around six to scrounge for some breakfast only to find a huge black bird flying around in circles in our basement desperately trying to get back to the great outdoors. After several minutes of terror (for all parties involved), the bird made his way up the stairs onto our first floor where he repeatedly flew into our beautiful bay window, deceived by the allure of the skies just outside the pane.
Amazingly Chris had the wherewithal to open the front door while Mary Allison and I hid. "Birdie go tweet tweet," May exclaimed. Somehow Chris' bird calls seduced the intruder outside and we breathed a momentary sigh of relief.
The two men from the county animal removal department pull up in their pick-up truck a few minutes later and change into their protective snow boots or astronaut boots. I couldn't tell which. We made our introductions and walked our visitors to the kitchen where our little chicks cried out for their breakfast; AJ and Lance quickly concluded that we needed their business and casually tell us that their services cost "twenty-seven-fifty."
"Twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents?" I ask.
"No ma'am. Two thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars."
We die. (See days 1, 2 and 8.)
....
After (most likely criminal) negotiations and with no other options, we sent the squirrely brothers out on their ladder to investigate. A few birds flew out with their poking and prodding but others were still left squealing deep inside the house forcing AJ to obliterate one of our kitchen walls and a serious chunk of our ceiling with the back of his hammer. ("No worries. We'll just move up that kitchen remodel timeline," thinks the exasperated school teacher and stay-at-home dad.) Unbelievably all of the gaping holes now in my house did not result in any more bird removal. Lance decided enough was enough so he stuck his bare arm and gloveless hand into the infested area (remember he is wearing 1980's snow boots up to his knees for protection) and began pulling out handful after handful of nest.
One more bird is freed, a nest big enough for a bald eagle is removed and our trusty brothers patch up the slit with metal mesh. Phew. We enjoy the next half hour of unpacking in the absence of chirping.
But the chirping returned and so did Mama Bird, beak full of grubs for her jailed chickies. Poor Mama, resolute and fierce, rammed into the metal mesh over and over to try and feed her babies. When she could not defeat the new blockade, she managed to rip off a piece of the siding on the house and created a new entrance to her flock. I can relate, Mama, but no. HELL no. Get your dying babies outta my house, girl!
So now my kitchen looks like a bomb went off, the side of my house is covered in Mama's nasty dung, and my ceiling is still home to several displaced birds.
Of course we alert our wild-life brothers but they have already made it to the Jersey Shore for another animal eviction and will not be able to resolve our problem until tomorrow. No problem, we'll just listen to dying baby birds for another day.
Thirty minutes pass. Then it's not just the sad cheeps from the birds. Now we have a mouse scurrying in the attic above our bathroom.
We die. (See days 1, 2, 8, 10 and the first half of day 11.)
....
Chris bought out the entire mouse trap/rat poison section at the nearby grocery store while I kept guard at the bottom of the stairs ensuring that the mouse kept his diseases to himself. (Or at least shared them with the birds and not my kid.) The damn mouse kept himself quiet long enough that my tense shoulders began to relax.
Then the scurrying again. It sounds huge. It sounds like it's coming down the (broken) air conditioning vent to the first floor. It is!!
I grab my child and slam a chair in front of the vent.
The animal struggles. (Is there any worse sound than mouse claws scratching metal? I think not.)
Then we see it's long back claw come out of the vent. I smash the vent with a 50lbs tool box. He scurries.
The scurries are moving. <<All the obscenities.>> It races invisibly through the house using our ducts as his highway.
Chris screams. The beast bursts through another vent in our living room. We all go barreling out of the house. May is only wearing underwear and yelling "SCARY!"
When we look back into our charming 1920's Cape Cod house, we see another huge black bird, not a rat, flying bat-shit-crazy in circles. Our neighbor (who we've never met) offers to chase the bird out with a broom but luckily the bird manages to escape on his own.
The bird brothers return tomorrow to evict the rest of the bird family.
TO BE CONTINUED.
