“Oh please, not again!” I whispered, thus beginning this weekend’s adventures. The ‘not again’ refers to this.
I was so intent on getting past that episode that I never finished that story.
The scratching we heard 15 minutes later did result in said bird returning to the laundry room either that night or sometime the next day. In the morning we checked the bread pan and found it empty and didn’t hear anything, so we went on to work. Upon returning home it seemed the thing hurt itself getting out of our bread pan trap (or in the following freaking-out it did). We tried opening the patio door, closing all other doors in the house and just letting it come out on its own, but it never did– then it got to dusk so it wouldn’t have the light to lead it out anymore. We tried capture methods as finally worked the night before, but it apparently remembered this and was scared out of its mind. We left it alone in the room with the light off in an attempt to calm it down, but it continued to flap around, running into ceiling, walls, door, anything it could. The poor thing was really going to hurt itself, so we decided we had to get it out ourselves. We employed similar broom and bird net techniques from the previous night’s exercises and managed to catch it and get it out, noting as we did so that it was bleeding. It flew across the street and landed in the grass and just sat there.
Upon returning to our laundry room (at this point it’s pretty sparse as we’d removed everything we could so it wouldn’t have to be cleaned again), we noticed the spots on the door. Then looking further, on the walls, the ceiling, the washer and dryer… everywhere. Not just bird poop (that was there, too, but was to be expected), but blood. It had bludgeoned itself trying to find a way out. This is unbelievably sad to me, but I really don’t know what else we could have done.
At some point either that day or the next, the chimney was fixed, so we had no more birds. It took a long time to clean all the walls and the door- even now a year later you can see where we had to scrub the paint to get the blood off.
So a recap:
2006
June 21 I hear something
June 26 Bird #1- dead
July 2 Bird #2-alive
July 3 call to Association re:birds
July 10 call to Landlord (prob should have done this sooner) and Bird #3- alive
July 11 Bird #4-alive, but bludgeoned
Which brings us to this morning and my opening quote. As I opened the laundry room door to get a new trash bag for the kitchen, I heard a little scratching sound and saw a laundry drying rack that’s folded up next to the furnace shift just a tad. Close door.
Mornings are good– close all doors in hallway, open patio door and screen (where it’s nice and sunny out today, thank God!), create nice directional on where to go.
Open door to laundry room about halfway, go sit on couch to see what happens.
Bird (same type as before) comes out from dark, narrow space next to furnace and onto pipe along front edge of furnace, presumably so I can get a look at him. He hops up and flies out of laundry room, through living room and directly out of patio door and back into the wild world of New Jersey.
2008
June 28 Brid #5- alive; call to Association, call to Landlord
I hope the list doesn’t get any longer
