Apologies for the lack of posts lately. I wish I had a good excuse, but there hasn't been anything interesting happening.
We did have an unexpected visitor on the weekend though. Remember Blossom the Possom? Blossom visited us at our old house in Kitchener, but has not visited us in Thunder Bay. She says she's waiting for better weather, but I don't think she'll acutally visit. She has a new boyfriend, so we don't hear from her much anymore.
On Saturday morning, Sean commented that Robo had been preoccupied with the fireplace for the last couple of days. I suggested that it was just wind coming down the chimney and stirring the ashes, but Sean and Robo decided to do some more investigation.
This is how much Snoopers cared about the investigation...Borrrrrring
While Professor Cat and his lab assistant were conducting their analysis, Sean yelped and exclaimed, "Whoa! There's something in there"!! Upon further inspection, Sean realized he was nose to nose with a bird. So we had a bird in our fireplace. What do you do when you realize you have a bird in your fireplace. Call your ornithologically inspired friends. We called our friend James. He must have tought we were crazy. He's a bird watcher, not a bird rescue unit. He didn't know what to do. We called Sean's dad. He said we have three options:
- Close the flue and let it die slowly
- Light a fire and kill it quickly
- Open the fireplace and hope for the best
We chose option three because we disagree for the killing of birds (except if we then bake it and feast on its flesh and skin).
At the point when we opened the fireplace door, the bird had flown up into the chimney and we weren't sure if it was still even in there. Per Sean's dad's advice, we started hoping for the best.
Within a minute or so I heard Sean whoop again, because the bird had flown out of the fireplace straight at his his head. It flapped around the window a bit and then got caught in the curtains. That's when the video started rolling.
Here's a picture of the bird and a picture of the bird poop it left on our window frame. Don't feel bad, birdie. You're not the first guest to shit themselves at our house, but usually it's due to laughter or drug use.
Note, that Sean and I used to be under the impression that we're people who can react to situations appropriately. This situation proved otherwise. Emergency medicine is definitely out of the cards for Sean. We reacted about as well as the folks in this horrifying bird attack video (auntie P - you may not want to watch this)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt8RDjlx9V8
I guess it was a learning experience.
- Learning #1 - if you're going to let a bird loose in your house, close all the blinds because the sound of a bird flying into a plate of glass is not pretty
- Learning #2 - Do not try to pick up a bird with your bare hands. It's impossible. And you may get avian bird flu
- Learning #3 - Your fiance is a man despite the fact that he screams like a lady
In other relatively uninteresting news, I found a 1-up hidden in the woods by the highway.
And I found out that people from Manitoba are not afraid to unabashedly "one up" the fishing in Ontario. Well, FU Manitoba!! I'm not sure who you're referring to as the "Manitoba Monster" on that billboard. Is it the fish or is it that hideous creature that's holding it?
I just realized where I know that bird from!!!
Q: How many Silence of the Lambs references can one blog have?
A: You can never have enough. It's such a light-hearted romp.
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Close all the curtains, open the front/back door and get a towel ready to grab the bird.
ReplyDeleteThat is the other thing your Dad meant to tell you.......
I had two animal/fireplace incidents when I first moved in:
ReplyDeleteThe first was a bird, clear path from fireplace to patio door, opened patio door, bird flew out.
The second was much worse, the problem is that the glass in front of the fireplace can be opened by pushing it, a bird didn't have the strength to do, a squirrel, well that's another story.
I got home one day and as I walking by the side window I noticed that there was a squirrel inside the house. I opened the front door in hoped that he would come out naturally, but after 15 minutes I figured he needed some encouragement. I went in the back door and he ran out the front. I'm glad there was no camera on me as there was a lot of nervous swearing going on.
Luckily, it seemed that he was only concerned with trying to get out to the point of not touching food that was on the counter.
Unfortunately when investigating the windows he got into the flower pots and tracked dirt around the house as well as doing some business on the kitchen table. He mostly concentrated on one particular window where the frame was scratched very badly.
After that I hired somebody to replace the screen on the top of the chimney, no incidents since then.