It’s a Bird…Maybe Not

We’ve had all our deck furniture off our deck for the past few weeks. We got the deck refinished — with a $1,000 interlude to have the squirrels extracted from our attic.

And we haven’t used our grill in several weeks. But something has.

Sheryl called me outside yesterday afternoon and said, “Take a look in the grill.”

We’d placed the grill pretty close to the busiest bird feeder in Chester County, so I wasn’t surprised when she said, “We can’t use the grill. There’s a new baby bird in there.”

I opened the grill and there was a perfect little nest made of grass clippings, fuzz and bird seeds. And there was a little thing moving around in the center of the nest. I looked at it. And looked again. Closed the grill. Then went back for one more look.

“Hey, Sheryl, I don’t think birds have ears,” I said. Sure enough, our little “bird” was something else. Our “bird” was just born, so it was a little hard to identify. But we could both see that it had little ears, a long face, and an even longer tail. Some sort of rodent creepy-crawler.

It’s funny how your attitude changes when you go from thinking that you have a little bird’s nest to the fact that you have a mouse nest in your grill. Well, that little guy went from being a “bird” to being bird food in about 30 seconds. I tossed the nest up on the hill, and when I checked later, it was gone. Yay.

Ugh. This is turning out to be our annus horribilis rodentia, with the squirrels and now this. I feel like Willard.

Posted on May 26, 2008
Filed Under Causes, Food, Frank's World | Comments

Comments

  • Dang, Tuna, I guess I never thought about the mice and the birdfood. We had the squirrels in it....now it looks like Mouse Family Robinson.
  • The Tuna
    Frank,

    Had the same issue one winter when I opened the old grill and found that three field mice had moved in. With the vacant land behind our house I had to take down the bird feeder as it attracted those little critters.

    Rich
  • I wondered how the squirrel saga played out. (ouch) We hae a robin's nest in a tree in front of the house which has ien me a lot o joy the last few days. I know the mouse was not as cute ( to you). I am glad you just moved it to a new location. It was still a mom protecting her young.
  • Merci
    Unfortunately, the rodents like the same food a the birds! Rodents are icky, some more so than others, but ANY rodent is icky in your grill!
  • Merci, I'll trade you. That thing was so icky. We have a bluebird house in the back that's getting used now, so that makes me happy. And we're going through 20lbs of bird feed a week...so the birds are happy, too. Just want the rodents to go away.
  • I have a bird's nest (Chipping Sparrows, actually) right next to my back door, in an ornamental tree. It has one perfect, tiny baby sparrow in it. The mama and papa sparrows monitor our comings and goings with quite a lot of interest (and noise).
  • Pax, I'm esepcailly afraid of that creepy Crispin Glover "Williard" and his tribe coming after me. As a topper, someone ran over a rabbit in front of our driveway and left it for me to clean up. I'm becoming the grim reaper of rodents. I'm going to end up in a horror movie if I don't watch out.
  • Oh my god, man, don't you watch horror movies???

    That rodent's mama is gonna' coming gunning for you, and she's going to bring her posse!
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