I awoke this morning to the sound of tapping beneath my bed. Tap tap tap … pause … tap tap. I wasn’t alarmed though, because I knew what I was hearing as I had heard it before during the previous week. It was Nick down in the kitchen, rapping on the vent that leads from our stove-hood to the outside of the house, with a wooden spoon. Why? Well, it seems that after years of us all merrily sharing the same outdoor area, a clever sparrow (or two) has figured out how to lift the little metal door flap that covers the vent, and to get inside the pipe.
How they do this is a mystery to us, because as I say there is a metal flap that covers the hole to the outside, that they must somehow lift and get under, all the while having absolutely no place to perch because the opening is flush with the brick wall.
We thought maybe something had happened to the flappy thing so Nick got up on the ladder to take a look the other day. Nope … there is nothing wrong with it at all. What has happened is that a particularly agile little bird has figured out how to get around it.
Sometimes we can hear him (her? them?) chirping away in there. Turning on the fan does nothing to disturb their glee at finding a warm place to relax.
We have decided that two solutions will be pursued …(1) we will replace the metal flap with a more secure fixture. (2) we will look into getting a bird house for them.
Because we love our little sparrow friends (previously seen here and here). Just like ‘our’ squirrels (seen here, here and here) we see them as our own pets who, of course, aren’t really pets. They are the wild ones that stick around our yard the whole year long, to be glimpsed at from our windows and laughed at because they do funny animal things.
These pictures were taken through our kitchen window using a telephoto lens. I’m not sure if these are the same birds that were in our vent though.
↑ doing a little preening of the feathers ↑
Before we met, Nick had a pet bird named Herschel. He was a blue parakeet who could be trusted to stay in his cage even with the door open, until he was invited out for some flying time. Apparently he would come and land on Nick’s outstretched finger and peck playfully at his knuckles. And guess what? Nick also had a cat, named Chris. But there was no conflict between pets, as these two were friends. Hershel used to ride around the apartment while standing on Chris’ back! How I would have loved to see that.
After six years though, Herschel met with a sad death. Nick had traveled out west to visit his family leaving some friends of his girlfriend-at-the-time to sit with the pets. Something mysterious happened to the bird while he was away, and he never really found out the truth of it. The explanation never really added up and to this day he still feels badly about his choice of house-sitters.
And on that happy note, I wish you a good Saturday. I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s pet related post and I thank you for reading it.
xo loulou
