It was a rainy day when I went to pick my son up from his dad's. I stood in the kitchen, talking with his aunt and her mom when we heard chirping in the attic, along with tapping sounds. We looked up at the light fixture over our heads as dust began to rain around the light bulb. We had known there were birds in the attic, but not the precise location. My son's aunt began to have a fit nearly immediately.
"It's in the light! Beth, the bird is in the light! You're the crazy bird lady, you have to get him out!" she yelled at me, from just a few feet away. At this point, I'm looking up to see if there is a way to reach through the light fixture. For one, if my hand fit, then the bird would, too, and be flying through the house. Two, I knew in the back of my mind there was no way it could be that simple. And that assumption was correct. We had to venture into the attic, cross the attic, hoping not to fall through the floor/ceiling, and retrieve the bird. Easy enough, right?
Armed with the smallest LED flashlight I've ever seen (and quite possibly the dimmest), we climbed into the attic. When we reached the light fixture, we shined this poor excuse for a flashlight into the kitchen light fixture. I knew we had heard it right there. I had seen the dust fall from right there. And there was plenty more dust to fall.
"I don't see anything," Kaleb's aunt said after a couple minutes.
We looked around the attic for signs of a flighted bird. Nothing. As she went in search for a light bulb for the attic, I continued to search the light fixture, I still could see nothing. "Maybe I'm crazy" she had said.
"No," I replied. "We all heard it, and we all saw the dust. It would mean we're all nuts, and I refuse to believe I'm losing my mind."
Just as the light in the attic was screwed into place, something caught my eye. With the help of the new light source, we found him, nestled in the dust of the light fixture, perfectly camouflaged. I picked him up, getting bit a couple of times in the process.
So began the process of removing a hyper angry bird from the attic. He stayed wrapped in my shirt to keep calm. And I struggled even more the cross the attic, this time with only one hand. Upon reaching the ladder, both my son and his cousin are downstairs yelling "I wanna see the bird!"
I showed them a bit of him after looking him over for injuries, not finding anything aside from a lack of understanding of light. Deemed healthy, but young, I brought him home and set him up in a cage with low perches and a nest bucket. He settled in after a few hours and napped contently.
