My husband has been wondering what’s been making a scratching noise in our room over by the window every dawn.
I haven’t heard it because I’m long gone by the time the sun comes up. Finally he worked it out yesterday, when he happened to notice a bird flying past the window. A family of sparrows have build their home in the wall of our house. They have managed to squeeze through a little hole from where some of our tiles have plunged to their deaths onto the concrete footpath below. The suicidal tiles are a long term problem, which previous owners have patched over, but it’s us who have lost this very expensive game of musical chairs (or do I mean hot potato? Or are we left holding the baby? I’m lost in a morass of metaphors), and ended up having to foot the bill to get the entire house reclad. In the meantime, these birds are making hay while the sun shines. I expect by the time the whole painfully slow and pricey business gets underway, this family of sparrows will have grown up and flown away.
Of course, I have contributed to this by putting birdseed out in the birdfeeder. All the neighbourhood sparrows know me by now as an easy touch and will take advantage of my kindness any chance they get. Honestly, it’s this sort of thing that turns old lefties like me into Tories. Bah humbug.
