This morning another bird made a claw-scratching descent into the bowels of our wood stove. Our springtime Santas. Usually, the birds rest for awhile on the platform at the bottom of the pipe before squirming into the belly of the stove, but this one never made an appearance. All day long he stayed well out of reach, and when we got home around dinner time it was ominously quiet in there. "It's gonna stink," one of the kids predicted. Yeah. (I'd heard a story of a guy who had dismembered his stove to remove a bird body. I figured Aidan would rather light a match.)Then scritch. Our friend still had a bit of life in him. But after half an hour of unproductive scritch-scratching, clearly, this bird was no closer to finding the exit sign. I made a bold move, swinging the stove door open wide. Maybe the fresh air would coax him out. It did. Bird-body hit every window in the place before flying into our eating nook where he just pin-ponged back and forth for awhile. I counted on him getting tired. The moment he flopped onto the floor I flung a quilt on top of him and cooped him up. Ha!
My kids took turns shaking his beak good bye. Tiny fingers pinched yellow beak ever so gently and wiggled back and forth. "Bye birdie." Then Elijah had a turn tossing him skyward. (They've got this routine down pat.) I'm sure this won't be our last launching.
Starlings. Always starlings. Which reminds me of this video I saw a few months ago:
