Lately I've been kinda tired. And I've also been having all sorts of weird thoughts and dreams. So at first, when I heard the chirping noises and mechanical beeping coming from my washroom, I ignored it. I assumed that it was coming from one of the rooms upstairs or the adjacent family room. But then I realized that nothing we owned made those sorts of sounds, nor did anything I've ever heard of. That's when I assumed that I was going crazy. Oh well, I thought to myself. I was just about to use the toilet, when I noticed that the sound was coming from the fan. I looked up at the white, square grate covering the pipe that channeled air outside, and suddenly there were clanging sounds, like metal against metal.
"...Mom..."
"Yes?"
"There's something..." But then the noises stopped, quite as suddenly as I had noticed them.
"Hmmm?"
"Nothing... It's just that I heard... something... nevermind." And then it came again. The chirping and mechanical beeping, followed by more clanging. "Uh, mom. There are chirping noises coming from the washroom." If that sentence sounded ridiculous, she didn't show it. She walked into the room, and for two seconds, there was silence. I was just about to justify that I wasn't imagining things when, surely enough, the disturbance came back. The first thing my mom did was curse.
"It must be a raccoon!" Then she continued to retell a story about how one of her friends had had a raccoon stuck in their pipes, and how they had tried to scare it away by blasting music and pounding the walls, but nothing worked, so they had to pay three hundred dollars to have it removed. I was pretty sure that raccoons did not make chirping noises, but that wasn't the point. Whatever was stuck in there needed to be removed before it caused any damage. My mom took the end of a mop and jabbed it at the grate. She was greeted by more clanging, and I tried to "hear out" (you know, like sniff out?) how many legs it had. I couldn't tell, but it definitely did not sound like a quadruped. Maybe a biped? We tried turning the fan on, but nothing happened.
I went outside to take a look at the end of the pipe, walking along the exterior of the house past the green bin, and there I found my answer. There was a bird perched in a seemingly impossible position: the side of the wall. It looked as though it was just floating there, but as I got closer, I realized that there was a large circular hole in the siding. The bird had somehow managed to remove the cover and had decided that the pipe was the perfect location to build a nest.
As I approached, the bird turned it's head towards me, then promptly took flight. Another bird that had been waiting on a chimney flew towards the nest with a twig in its mouth, but seeing that there was an intruder in the shape of a human, made a hairpin swerve and soared off. My mom came out, and I explained what I had seen. We noticed that the cover had dropped onto the ground in our neighbour's backyard. I pushed the gate which turned out to be unlocked. We brought out a ladder and replaced the cover, which had broken, but would have to do for now.
I received a jolt in my bladder, and remembered that I had had to go. Running back inside, I headed towards the washroom. Just as I was about to release, I heard clanging noises again.
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