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An eventful morning as we tried to ready the house and get lunch ready for some friends coming over. If only it had been our boss it would have been properly in Terry and June territory.
I was pretty wiped out after getting in from Cardiff at 2am, but wanted to do as much as I could to help. Catie told me that there had been a significant fall of ash and general crap down the chimney in Phoebe’s room and I’d need to get that hoovered up before the kids could play in there. But every time I went to get to the hoover there was another job to do. When I finally got Mr Dyson’s hoover out of its docking place I could hear someone bashing around upstairs. Which was odd, as I thought everyone was downstairs but as I went up the stairs I saw a big crow flying around in the hallway.
I had already had to deal with one massive dead crow that had come down the chimney when no one was here, which had finally come to a tragic demise in our attic. That had horrified me enough. But it turns out a living bird in your house is much more scary than a dead one.
I called out to Catie, my voice going high and quavery like it does when I think I am about to be knocked out of Pointless, but she was in the middle of cooking. The bird went into my son’s room, which was kind of the worst place for a huge disease ridden scared and potentially shitting ex dinosaur to be. But my son wasn’t in there (as far as I knew) and if I shut the door at least the flapping would be contained and the terrified beast wouldn’t swoop down and peck off my nose, as black birds as wont to do in their continued war with humanity,
Luckily my mother-in-law was here, and she’s not scared of anything. Even an outdoor thing being inside. And flapping.
She wanted a towel to throw over it and I was manly enough to get that for her. She disappeared upstairs and I hid in the lounge waiting for the sound of defeated bird or pecked to death mother-in-law (let’s face it, whoever won this contest I couldn’t lose, am I right fellas?- though not sure the bird will ever come round to do babysitting for us, so maybe my mother-in-law just had the edge).
She thought the bird was in Phoebe’s room and it took ages for her to discover that it wasn’t - not sure why, Phoebe’s room is small and the bird was still flying around next door.
Finally I came back upstairs and my mother-in-law was having no luck. She didn’t know how to open the windows, so I was brave enough to come in (I screamed like a small child just so my mother-in-law didn’t feel too bad at not having succeeded in her quest). I opened the window and the battered crow saw its opening and escaped.
Safe to say I was a hero.
I assumed the bird had come down the chimney, though at what point I don’t know. The collapse of chimney shit had happened a while a go. Had the bird been hiding upstairs somewhere, or had it just been part way down the chimney trying to work how to get out.
I had lots of jobs to do, but needed to clean up the mess and block up the chimney. I managed to do both, though had underestimated how big the chimney was and didn’t quite fill the hole. Which was lucky because just as I hoovered up the last few bits of crap our cat came bundling out of the chimney. Had he been up there going after the bird? Or just snuck up there in the ensuing chaos. If I’d successfully incarcerated our pussy in the chimney then that would have added a whole new layer to the developing sitcom. As it was our guests arrived very soon after this, blissfully unaware of the social bird and cat nightmare that they had narrowly avoided.
But I told them about it.
Cos not much happens in the country.
And we’re getting nets put in the chimney when we’ve got scaffolding up in a couple of months, so hopefully this should be our last visitor. Birds in the house is one of my worst things, it turns out.
