Thursday, April 16, 2009

Crazy Woodpecker

Maybe putting out a bird-feeder wasn't such a good idea. Maybe it simply attracted the wrong kind of bird. Either way, we have a problem.

At about 9am on Sunday morning, we were woken by what sounded like our neighbour drilling through sheet metal in his garage. For the next half hour or so at roughly two- to three-minute intervals, we were treated to a dreadful burst of drilling that robbed us of any chance of falling asleep again. So we just lay there cursing our neighbour's cheek at doing DIY with the garage door open early on Easter Sunday.

The drilling started up again as we were about to take the kids to school on Monday, so I stuck my head out of the front door to discover not only that my neighbour's garage was firmly closed, but that the sound was coming from our own roof - or more prescisely, our metal chimney stack. The mystery was solved: it had to be a woodpecker.

The culprit?

Later that day, I called up a neighbour who is a vet to ask him how to stop a woodpecker turning your house into Swiss cheese. "Oh that'll be that crazy woodpecker," he said. "There's nothing you can do. He'll go away eventually. But he nearly drove my wife crazy last year for the ten days he drilled on our chimney pot."

Ten days?! I thought. That meant at least eight days more.

Sure enough, Woody was back at work the very next day, and I now know he must be insane. Every time he finished his drilling, he'd emit an ear-piercing shriek, as if to say, "Ow, that really hurt!"

And then he'd start up again two minutes later.

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