Close Encounters of the Bird Kind
Week 15 of 2024 has wings…
To see how Sam Pepys spent this week 364 years ago, follow this link.
This week began with a significant anniversary for Ermma and me: 10 years knowing of each other’s existence.
We celebrated with an evening meal at the pub closest to Castle End Mission, the church hall in Cambridge where I’d been rehearsing Guys & Dolls with the Pied Pipers Musical Theatre Club, and our make-up artist paid her first visit.
Ah… Guys & Dolls. What a show that was. At its heart, a story of how much luck is involved in bringing people together. Without it, Ermma and I may have never met. How’s that for synchronicity?
While there was a drama at the start of our relationship, though, there was real drama at the start of this week. It was the week of Boss Man’s annual leave, and he’d left me in charge. He’d also gone and arranged for his team to deliver a week-long school visit beginning this Monday – meaning he was cunningly absent when one of the team called to say there was no-one to meet them at the school.
The Boss Man had sent the team to the school one week early, while the school was still on its spring holiday…
So having spent nearly £1,000 on hotels, vans, and team fees to arrange that gig, I spent most of that Monday postponing everything. Sadly a lot of the costs were non-refundable.
Boss Man had left me a chunk of money to pay business expenditure while he was away. Adding in the team’s invoices for the ongoing event at the Galleria in Hatfield, 70% of that budget had been spent before 11am on Boss Man’s first day of leave.
Later that same day, I became aware of a constant squawking sound somewhere in the House, occasionally coupled by a thud. At first I assumed it was the kittens playfighting, and after one particularly desperate squawk I thought I’d better go intervene.
But both kittens were fast asleep. Returning to my office in the dairy, I realised the squawks and thuds were emanating from the parlour. Cautiously I opened the door…
Sadly I was too late. Had I been earlier, maybe I could have opened a window for the poor jackdaw now lying lifeless by the hearth. But from the continued sound of panicked squawks, it was clear it had friends – or possibly family – still trapped in the stove.
I called the RSPCA, who told me they couldn’t send anyone to help with the landlord’s permission. So I called the estate agent, whose first response was to try telling me that Ermma and I were responsible for clearing the chimneys.
I reminded the agent that the parlour is in the old half of the House, which the Trust is fully responsible for – or else we’ll be in trouble with the local council, since we only pay council tax for the half we inhabit. I also pointed out that the trapped birds were leaving a fair amount of mess in rooms that the Trust wanted to be open to the public, plus also causing considerable damage to the single pane windows.
A while later, the agent emailed with the result of his research:
They can’t cap the chimney till the stack is clear – and since you can’t clear a nest with live inhabitants, they’d have to “let nature take its course” and consider preventative measures again come the summer.
The agent was also confident that birds must be able to get out through the top of the chimney if they had got in that way. I understood the sense of that, but upon closer inspection of the stove, the gap through from the chimney would’ve been a tight squeeze for the jackdaw – and indeed, that same inspection revealed a jackdaw that had perished after wedging itself in that gap.
From the state of decay, it was clear this second body had been lodged there for a while. Clearly it wasn’t so easy for the birds just to return the way they’d come, otherwise they wouldn’t be so keen to take the tortuous path into the parlour.
And at that moment, there was at least another jackdaw trapped up there. So I opened all the parlour windows before removing our fallen winged comrades and giving them a mini burial by the trees bordering the orchard.
By the time I returned to the dairy, the parlour was quiet. At least one jackdaw had lived to squaw some more.
Come Friday, Sweeping Tom, our brilliantly monikered chimney sweep, popped round with a camera kit to attempt a peek up Pepys’ chimney. Frustratingly, though, he set up all his gear only to discover that the viewing screen was cracked.
So as of now, we’re still without evidence of whether the chimney is clear to cap. Despite his protestations, I paid Tom for his time. He’d need something to put towards the new screen, after all.
Fortunately, the week ended on a much more calm note, with Ermma and me finally purchasing a lawnmower and making a start on the acre-odd of grass we need to cut.
When we first glanced at each other in that church hall during rehearsal, how could we possibly have predicted we’d end up in a House like this, with weeks like these?!
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