Apparently our house is becoming an aviary - outside and in! Last weekend, while sitting in the living room with Will, I heard a fluttering sound in our chimney, and it soon became apparent that a bird had fallen down in it. We have a little gas fireplace; the flue is blocked with a metal plate, so I naively hoped that the bird would just find his way out. After spending some time out in the backyard, I came back inside with Will, only to find that the metal plate does not completely block the chimney, as a red-headed woodpecker was flying around our living room!
What ensued was a brief but intense battle of me trying to sweep him out the front door with a broom while Beth held the door open. But the woodpecker kept lingering in the house and flying from room to room. After he fell behind the piano, Beth joined me and together we pinned him against a window underneath a serving bowl cover.
You can see on the sides of the bowl some smears of blood. We think he ran into the ceiling fan at one point and nicked his wing, so everywhere he flew he left little smears of blood (gross, but I cleaned it up). But when we let him go, he flew away just fine, so it wasn't that bad.Will was a little freaked out at seeing the bird (and such a big one!) in the house, and for the rest of the day he kept asking, "Where is he?" and looking around at the ceiling. We tried to defuse things, though, by showing him the bird after we caught him (and took the above pictures) and tried to keep light-hearted about it. Overall, just another bird adventure in the Dekker household!
3 comments:
Bird knowledge of the day: the bird probably didn't scratch its wing--it's more likely that it broke a blood feather. As bird feathers grow in, blood fills the shaft. Once the feather has finished growing, the shaft empties. Hopefully the bird was able to land on a branch, find the broken feather, and pluck it out so the bleeding could stop. Once the immediate health danger was over, it could then focus on getting a good therapist to deal with the recent mental trauma.
Will's going to flash back on this incident if he ever watches that Hitchcock movie.
That's good to know, Suzanne! He flew away just fine when we let him go; I think he landed in the branches of a tree across the street.
And, yeah, I think Will's gonna have a rough time with The Birds.
that is CRAZY! what is with the birds there? and how cool that it was a woodpecker! i've never seen one and here one just flies right into your house.....
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