Birds II and Birds III

We only thought our bird adventures were finished last month with the discovery (and subsequent removal of) a dead bird from our house-for-sale.

We were wrong.

About a week later, we got a phone call from our realtor, on a Friday evening. I got a little excited. I shouldn't have. She had just finished a showing of our house in which she and the show-ees found three more birds in our house. One was still alive.

So the nice couple helped to shoo the live bird out before resuming their tour. (They may have liked the house, but have a house of their own to sell and have not made us any offers. I'm not sure the presence of dead birds helped speed up the process.)

When my husband went to investigate and clean up (again), he found that the birds devised an alternate means of entry. The first one came in through the bathroom vent and pushed his way through the ceiling vent cover (it was hanging loose and the bathroom facilities had clearly been utilized by an avian visitor).

This time, the bathroom vent cover was intact. But they used the same outside vent entrance (my attempts at covering it had been pecked through and they had used some of the netting for a new nest). Instead of coming down the vent, they came through the side of the duct and into the unfinished side of our basement.

So that was fun. My husband did a much more extensive repair job than my attempt. He had to replace a section of vent tubing, and found a vent cover that should be more bird-proof than window screening. I had tried to buy a vent cover, but I couldn't fit a cover over the opening because of the deck ledger board. He used a Dremmel.

So far, so good. So on Thursday night, we were all in the car and kept hearing a funny chirping sound. When we got home, hubby checked his car, found his spare tire had been installed upside down, righted it, and thought all was good.

The car chirped again the next morning. You guessed it. Another bird. In the car.

You'd think these things would learn by now. We own cats. We barbeque chicken. We have power tools. When we talk about "nest eggs" in our house, we mean the financial type! (Or else scrambled).

Sheesh.