Sneak

For several days in the past few weeks, we've woken up every morning to loud chirping and scratching coming from the general direction of our laundry room. It starts at the crack of dawn and lasts till dark. We investigated by peeking behind the dryer and found two Tide sticks, lots of lint, and the start of a nest. (Click to enlarge if you need to.)

Unbelievable. Luckily no eggs yet. Since we moved here we have had a white-trash dryer pipe that juts out about a foot from the house and has no cover on the end. The little bird building a nest in it helped us decide that it was time to move up in the world and put the blasted cover (which we have had sitting on the shelf above the washer for almost 2 years) on. So Nate defied death by standing on step on the ladder that says "DANGER: do not stand on or above this rung or step" and sticking the cover on the pipe.

And yet, the next morning, I heard the same old scratching. Loud, persistent, annoying. Threatening to wake the kiddies during naps. He was climbing into the cover through the little flap to continue working on his nest! I started turning on the dryer every time I walked by in hopes that it would blast the little guy to kingdom come - or really anywhere other than in my dryer pipe. And then I started noticing that I had to dry all our laundry on high for two full cycles to even begin to get it dry. Lame.

So step 1 was to remove the worthless cover and replace it with a piece of window screen held in place with elastic. For good measure we hung a war flag of plaid Christmas material off the pipe in hopes that it would scare him away. The flag did not work. He spent a large portion of the next afternoon pecking on the screen trying to get in, but luckily it held fast. And then we took the flag down because it took our screen-covered white-trash pipe to the next level.

The clothes were still not getting dry, however, and I was picturing 4-digit electric bills, (curse that little sneak of a bird) so Nate manned up and climbed back behind the dryer to do a little tinkering and try to fix it.

The stinking bird crawled all the way through the pipe, which, as you can see from the first picture, must've been no small feat, especially when you don't have hands and your beak is full of straw. Needless to say, the dryer works once more. (And we are relieved to report that there were still no eggs.)