Looking Back, I'm Sure This Is Going To Make A Really Funny Story. If Someone Set That To Music, I'd Use It As My Theme Song Right Now.

Our air conditioning has been fixed and life is waaaay more comfortable now that we have some cool air circulating again.  Turns out our AC wasn't even the problem, really.  The repairman simply had to flip a switch in the attic to turn the unit back on.  The big issues were raised when he came down from the attic (after about 30 seconds) with a very disturbed expression on his face and said, "Mrs. High, you may want to call animal control.  I got your AC turned back on but your attic is filled with pigeons.  It looks like something on Animal Planet up there.  I've never seen anything like that before."

I pictured this first.

Then this.

The term the professionals have used to describe our situation is an infestation.  We have a pigeon infestation.  Not a pigeon problem or an issue, an infestation.  We are infested with pigeons.  Help me.

It seems our attic has been home to a very large group of pigeons for some time now.  We had a wildlife biologist out yesterday to start the recovery process and his professional opinion was that the pigeons have lived in our attic longer than we've lived in our home.  Our home, built all of three and a half years ago, came with pigeons.  Lots of them.  We knew they sat on our roof and could hear them overhead, but we never imagined they were actually inside our house.  We kept convincing ourselves that it only sounded like they were right overhead.  We figured it was just the acoustics of a tile roof that caused the noise to seem so close.  Wrong.  They were right over our heads.  Pooping.

From the reports I've received, the entire floor of our attic is covered with their droppings and apparently our upstairs furnace is too.   There were pigeons flying around, sitting along the wall, even some dead pigeons were laying amongst the living in various stages of decay.  The animal control professional began the removal process yesterday and it will continue all next week while we are out of town.  I didn't focus too much on how the initial removal occurred, but based upon the huge infestation (that word), it wasn't going to be pretty.  Suffice it to say, I lit a candle yesterday under the attic door and apologized for any pigeon "discomfort".

Adding insult to injury, the attic is accessed from the closet in our master bedroom.  The door is just over my sweaters.  After the "removal" I found bits of attic fluff and pigeon poop scattered like confetti on my clothes.  The dry cleaner better staff up because I've got a big load coming their way.

Once the pigeons are all out, we can have the pigeon-sized hole under our eave sealed up, and then the remediation begins.  This involves scraping and shoveling and a bleach wash.  I am so grateful there are people who do this for a living and I am going to make darn sure our closet is cleared out before bags of whatever remains of the pigeon commune are carted out.

So that's the latest.  I'm considering this our Hitchcock summer.  We've had Vertigo and now The Birds.  I guess seeing that we have a road trip ahead of us Rear Window may be next on the list.  Psycho isn't out of the question, though.

I'm wearing this today because I'm washing all the clothes for our trip and these pieces did not make the cut.

I thought the patterned pants may distract from the awesomeness of Mount Rushmore.  That or they would spook a herd of buffalo and I'm just not up for a stampede.

gratitude:  helpful professionals, cool air, maps, adventures

thanks and love.