Another Unwanted Visitor

Yesterday I woke up to discover that a bird had flown into my house, up the stairs and into my old bedroom. Now, this is actually the second time in the last couple of years that this has happened. Apparently a group of small birds like to hang out just above the front door and then make a break for the warmth when we open it to get the paper first thing in the morning. Orginally my mom suggested leaving it alone until my brother could help me herd the bird outside but since I wasn't in a waiting mood and my brother is not a great hunter anyway, I decided to go after it myself. Now, the last time this happened I removed both the top and bottom panes of glass as well as the screen from two windows, hoping the bird would just fly out on its on, but it never did. After almost two hours of trying to coerce the bird outside, I ended up catching it under a plastic container, sliding a cover underneath and then releasing the bird out the window, where it appeared to want to bang a U-turn and almost managed to fly back in. It was a giant pain. Fortunately, this time around the bird was a lot less determined to stick around.

When I walked in the bird was in the corner, flying into the window, so clearly it wanted to go back outside. Rather than spook the bird and go at it, I removed the bottom pane of glass and pulled out the screen of one window on the other side of the room to make sure I had the set-up that I wanted. Then it was just a matter of aiming the bird at the correct open window and getting it out of the area where it was hanging out. What I learned from this experience is that you get rid of a bird much like you get rid of an unwanted naked man in your living room - sort of puff yourself up and rush at the bird, scaring it to the point that it tries to move as far away from you as possible. And in this case that meant it flew to the side of the room where the open window was. After flying into the half of the window I left in place on the first attempt, the bird shook it off and was gone on the second attempt. The whole thing took about 10 minutes, which is a huge time improvement. However, I'm not sure if getting wildlife out of my house is a skill I want to be really experienced at. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to composing a letter of disinvite for this bird.