Why a bird in the hand .... is a mess afterwards!

Who are you looking at sonny?!!

SO here’s the dilemma….you get home after work, switch on the lights to head upstairs and there you are greeted by a very frightening sight – a low-flying bird shitting all over your bedroom carpet!

More to the point, what do you do to stop Poopbird from pooping all over your freshly-smelling duvet, immaculately clean bath and a framed picture of Pope Benedict XVI hung in the corner next to a scented candle? 

Okay, I lied about the papal picture and the candle (that’ll be two Hail Mary’s and a packet of roasted peanuts at the next confession), but I’m still in a state of distress. Call it post traumatic bird disorder so hopefully I can get some tweetment from the quack! See, I'm so disturbed I've even lost my sense of humour!! 

This said bird, according to a twitching friend, was a baby Jackdaw; a black-plumaged bird with a grey nape and distinctive white irises, which is found in farmland and urban areas, as well as open wooded areas and coastal cliffs – latin names Corvus monedula  or Quitpoopingon myeffingcarpetus.

What a faff it was. I opened all the windows and a small wooden door which leads out of the first floor bedroom into the fields beyond in the hope of encouraging my feathered friend to make a swift exit outdoors. But this little jittery Jackdaw was clearly the birdbrain of the family.

Despite the giant-sized clue of a fresh gale billowing through the door and windows, it kept flying between the rafters of my tall ceiling bedroom. I tried leaving the lights on, I tried turning them off. Like an RAF bomber on a deadly night mission, it would stealthily swoop down with its bomb doors open to splat the ground below.

Jackdaw poop by the way is green and very unpleasant, particularly on a white carpet or when it drips down your sink.

I tried shushing the bloomin' bird, waving at it with blankets. I then lost my rag and threw pillows at the bird, and it pooped on those too!

My next door neighbour came in to have a gander. His cat came in too, looked and walked away disdainfully as if to say, "you two idiots can get on with it".

My neighbour brought with him a ladder plus a Ken Dodd feather duster – essential items in any bird chase, it seems. Not that there is a handy reference book around about dealing with these sort of emergencies.

But for 15 minutes it was like Keystone Cops as we chased this bird around the room, trying to corner him/her – I never did get a close look at its undercarriage – so that Poopforbrains would eventually take its leave.

I had visions that this was going to last all night or even the Jackdaw would never leave. Crikey, I would be left with a squatting shitting bird.

Maybe this bird would be flying in my room at night as I slept, bombing me from on high, and even swooping down to peck at my eyes like an Alfred Hitchcock film.

Remarkably, just as my friend and I were suffering from the first doses of exhaustion, looking decidedly red-faced and unsteady – and I was thinking about sleeping downstairs for the night – the jumped-up Jackdaw spotted an open window and flew out in the night ahead.

I hated birds before, I now hate them even more, and I hated cleaning up all the poop afterwards. Chocks away!