A Home for Birds, Bats, and Skunks?

“As soon as the birds flew out, the phone started working again,” said Mom this morning. “No one will believe me if I tell them our phone call got cut off because of the birds.”‘

“Everyone will think we’re cuckoo if we say our phone and internet isn’t working because the birds are building a nest again,” I agreed.

This, however, is absolutely the truth. The phone box that houses the wires that lead to our house and tether us to the outside world via phone and internet has become the nesting spot of two starlings. Inside the box, the birds peck at the wires and move around, disrupting the service. And once birds decide to build a nest somewhere, it’s hard to get rid of them.

“This is the fourth time they’re building a nest this spring. As soon as the phone company comes out and removes the nest, the birds are back at it!”

Since my dad and I go work during business hours, it’s up to Mom to call the phone company. The customer service personnel first makes Mom go through a long list of all other possible problems, and then, with great reluctance, lest we have COVID-19 lurking at our house, they send out a technician to clean out the nest and fix the wires.

We live in town, not in the country. But that hasn’t stopped us from having animal problems. The birds in the phone box are the latest in a long list of Burkholders versus nature conflicts.

Rabbits like to eat the lettuce and peas in the garden (can’t say I’m sorry about the peas) and robins eat strawberries. We’ve had opossums, pheasants, and neighborhood cats that roam freely. Once, when I was a child, I clearly remember seeing a wild turkey walk across our deck.

Another time we heard strange screeching in the living room, coming from the wood stove. Dad went outside and opened the small door at the bottom of the chimney. An owl with big eyes and a sharp beak stared back at him and Dad backed off quickly.

Bats got inside our house several times. This was long before the world know about a place called Wuhan, but even then, bats were creepy.

One bat got trapped inside a large vase in our kitchen. Another bat flew at my mother in the hallway, having escaped from the attic after someone neglected to close the attic door properly.

We got the roof re-done, and the bat problem in the attic went away.

After the owl got in the chimney, Dad put a cover on the chimney. This didn’t stop one determined bat from coming down the chimney. You can see him below, inside the wood stove.

Dad put on thick work gloves and then simply reached in and grabbed the bat, and carried the furry brown creature outside the house to freedom.

But the skunks were the worst.

They first sprayed late one spring night. I had gone to bed early. My brother still lived at home and he and our parents detected a terrible odor coming into the house from below the front porch. They frantically opened windows and set up fans, trying to draw out the odor before it settled permanently into the carpets and walls of the house.

“And Susan slept through it all,” said Andrew the next day. “How could you not hear that?”

We put moth balls under the porch to keep them from coming back. The skunks simply moved around the corner and sprayed underneath the deck.

Early one morning, Dad saw the two skunks slink across the yard. “If we don’t do something about the pair, we’ll soon have skunk babies to deal with.”

Dad bought a live trap and baited it with tin can cat food.

“Did the trap work?” we asked the next morning.

“It caught the neighbor’s cat.”

My brother-in-law loaned us bigger traps. Dad then blocked off the bottom deck as much as possible, leaving one opening, with the trap set invitingly in front of the hole.

The skunks pushed the trap aside as they exited and entered the hole. (Perhaps it was just as well, as handling a skunk in a live trap is a tricky business.)

Calling an animal control specialist didn’t help. The neighbor’s cat got caught several more times in the trap. We were all on edge, wondering when the skunks would spray next.

Then it rained and rained.

Water flooded the skunks’ home beneath the deck, and did what moth balls and traps could not: they convinced Mr. & Mrs. Skunk to find another spot for their nest.

We have never seen them again.

Today, the birds are still building their nest. They are most active in the morning and I’m most active in the evening so sharing the phone line is working.

For now.