Compartment 14B

For the birds. 2004-04-15 - 1:13 p.m. I hate starlings. I didn�t used to hate them � they seemed like bold, enterprising gold-speckled black birds - I only developed this hatred since becoming a home owner. Starlings, you see, use their intelligence and enterprise to find places to nest that bug the crap out of home owners; namely, in their homes. Last year my husband reported hearing an odd noise and thought it was some sort of animal walking in our gutter. It took awhile before I heard it too and I quickly ascertained that the sound was coming from inside our roof! It turns out that starlings are masters at finding some small crack and enlarging it until they can slip inside. We managed to get it sealed up without entombing any of the little buggers and we hoped that that would be the end of it. Not so. This morning, before my alarm was due to go off, I was in bed drowsing and I heard the all-too-familiar pitter patter of little feet. Little feet with claws. Pitter pattering in the soffit overhanging our bedroom window. !!! I sat bolt upright with a �You gotta be kidding me!� threw on something to preserve my modesty and raced onto the balcony. Sure enough, pit-a-pat-a-pit-a-pat-a, accompanied by a small wave of indentation in the soffit. I�ve been informed that once starlings get into a place, they�ll keep returning and giving it the old college try year after year, no matter how many times they�re evicted. This year they�re getting in via the neighbour�s side and running around inside the soffit which surrounds the whole building. The neighbours and I have made a deal though, they�ll pay to have some fencing put up that they want, we�ll get rid of the birds. A friend is lending me his climbing harness and a rope and we�ll look into it a bit more closely tonight. Let�s hope that by the weekend it�ll be bye bye birdy. Before - After All content � Shawna 2003-2010 That means no swiping my stuff - text, images, etc. - without asking. P.S. If you're emailing me, replace the [at] with @ in the "to" line. Oh, and if you put the word "journal" in the subject line it'll have a better chance of making it past my junk mail filters. recommend me HTML and design help by Jo hosted by Diaryland