A ghost in the House
This morning sitting at my computer as usual I heard this almighty bang, and constant tapping. Now this may not be unusual, however it was 5 am in the morning (my oldest dog has decided that 5 am is when HE WANTS FED, and also kids on he wants out to the toilet - so who can argue) and most normal people are still in bed sleeping.
Anyway I heard this bang, bang noise going on after a loud noice occured in our blocked up fireplace, the house is over 200 years old so who is going to say it is not haunted? After being totally freeked out by the noise I told my wife about it, of course at 5am who would believe me. The noise stopped (of course).
Later on about 9.30 am I heard the noise again, yet this time it was a flapping sound behind the boarded up panel in front of the old fireplace. I realised in horror that it was not a ghost but a bird that had fallen into our disused chimney. Crows tend to try and build nests on the chimney pot and I envisaged a large rather pissed off crow in the fireplace - or worse still baby crows stuck behind the wall not able to get out.
We decided on emergancy demolition of blocked up fire - then I realised that the air vent may be big enough to let out a bird (or two), so off we both went to set up the rescue - not sure if it was a crow or a bat. We gradually unscrewed the air went and out popped a wee head - a pigeon, not a ghost. This pigeon was ringed and did not look harmed by its adventure in any way. So we carefully got it into a box and gave it some food and water before letting it go. Happily it flew off after I gave it a little encouragement to leave our garden - I just hope it has learned its lesson not to trust its weight on a half built crows nest!
Pictures of this ghostly event!
Larger digital photo of the pigeon in a box
For larger images visit the Pictures section and Ghost Pigeon page