The Houseguest

I figured when my wife went off for a couple of weeks with our newborn son on a meet-greet-recuperate-gain-lose-weight visit home, I would be back to the joys of bachelorhood. The days would be cool and short. The evenings would be long and loud. I would renew acquaintance with sundry bar-tenders and sidewalks from whom domesticity had sundered me.

Needless to say, things did not quite materialize as I had visualized. The drinking buddies were married and settled. For them (too) it was no longer booze-bottle, pub crawls and occasional skirt, rather the milk-bottle, night-changes and occasional burp. The bar-tenders had new winos. The sidewalks were paved over, or had new squatters – teens whose folks ought to know what they are up to (Really! In my day, the youth showed a bit more restraint and a lot more responsibility).

My wife was off for three weeks. She left late on Thursday evening. Friday morning I jumped out of bed and headed to work, looking forward to a good evening ahead. By Friday afternoon when I had made a few phone calls, my spirits were dampened. Folks were busy - kids needed to go to piano or swimming lessons, bills needed to be paid, siestas needed to be taken...in short the folks I used to paint the town red with in my youth had plain run out of paint.

A fruitless weekend loomed large. Beaten, I rented movies. Friday morphed into Saturday and I had revisited such Buster Keaton classics as The General and Battling Butler, when I decided to look at the things-to-do list my wife had left behind. 

She is awesome! She had even catalogued it A through Z to make it easier for me. I started at the back - Washing, clothes as opposed to Washing, drapes and Washing, dishes (ongoing). I was eating off a newspaper so the third was off. I decided to chuck the list (for the time being).

The apartment we lived in came with a front-loading washing machine, on which was mounted a front-loading clothes drier. Both were fitted outside the kitchen in a small utility area, just across the refrigerator. As I walked over to the fridge to get a drink, I saw that the door of the drier (atop the washer) was ajar. I went to close it. I saw then that there was a pigeon in it.

The fellow was probably taking shelter from the storm. It had rained in the morning. "It was a pity the pigeon was there, Sweets," I imagined myself saying, "I thought I would wait for the pigeon to leave before doing the Washing, clothes. Unfortunately this also prevented me from doing the Iron, clothes as well." A likely story, fortunately true. I decided to do Eating, ice-cream and Watching, movies instead.

Sunday morning saw the bird firmly lodged in the same place. I decided I had to at least try to get it off the premises (Time was on my side - there were several days for me to make the apartment bird free). I put some rice on the ledge opposite the drier. This didn't tempt the dove. Some research was needed, since I wasn't too familiar with the culinary habits of pigeons. Maybe I had the wrong stuff. The wikipedia page on pigeons showed a photograph with the caption "Pigeons selectively eating wheat instead of rice grains." I had the wrong cereal. Wheat posed a slight problem. While we did consume wheat, it wasn't in the grain form. I tried cornflakes with no result. In fact he ignored all of the breakfast cereals I had at home except he gurgled a bit at fruit loops. Maybe this was it. I deposited a small pile of the coloured loops on the ledge and waited. The pigeon looked at me, cooed throatily and bobbed up and down. It seemed he wanted privacy to eat. I wanted him to eat with me present so I could close the door to the drier and evict him. I think he figured out this Machiavellian plan of mine since he waited where he was. Patience was his strong suit. Ten minutes of squatting on the kitchen floor peering from behind the door broke my resistance and I decided to go out for breakfast. When I returned that night after a particularly long repast involving three restaurants, two bookstores and one bar, the cereal had disappeared, the pigeon had not.

As I left for work next morning, I felt certain he would push off by evening (cars to re-decorate, friends to meet).

The next three days were a blur for me, what with meetings and planning and conference calls and eating out. Thursday night as I entered home, I remembered I had a houseguest. I went over to the drier with some trepidation. The pigeon was cooing contentedly inside. I wondered why it was called cooing. It seemed more like burbling. Maybe the pigeon and the Jabberwock were related.

The unwanted houseguest was still there. I needed to take care of it, before wife and child returned, lest I be accused of turning the apartment into a menagerie. I decided to give it one more day. The weekend was almost upon us. I'd take care of the dove infestation then.

Saturday morning came and I put my plan into action. I would do Washing, clothes, the drier was not needed in the washing part of the exercise and the washing machine made a hell of a racket and shook and really hard. It would be like staying on a bucking horse for our pigeon. He was sure to be scared off.

I loaded the machine and made myself scarce. I was sure in the ninety minutes it took for the washing machine to run the clothes through the customized obstacle course would be enough to get rid of the pigeon. I had nothing better to do at home, so I pushed off to have breakfast. I came back in a couple of hours. The house was silent. The machine had finished its program.

The bird was still there. Looking rather smug, I must admit. The only explanation I could think of was that it must have flown back in once the bucking washer stopped, and I had not been around to close the door to prevent it entering the drier again.

I hung out the washing to dry inside the apartment on the dining table, the chairs, the living room coffee table, the fridge. I had washed a big load because that is when the machine rocks the most. The apartment got a bit damp inside.

I had to get the infernal bird out. I needed another load of clothes. I stripped off all the bedsheets, clothes that needed to be aired (if they needed to be aired, they could be washed too, I checked off Air, winter clothes from the list), the drapes - anything in remote need of a wash.

I put in the second load for washing. I thought I saw the pigeon look a trifle alarmed. Must be like an earthquake for him. This time, I braved the damp, cold, hunger and other depredations to wait out the ninety minutes. The washing machine started humming, slowly gaining volume. The initial part of the cycles were more stop and start. It was at the end of eighty minutes that the real action started when the machine tried to get every last bit of moisture from the washed clothes by spinning madly. It rocked and jumped and hopped furiously making loud thumping noises. There was no sign of the pigeon. It retreated further inside. No one told the dumb bird that during an earthquake you should leave buildings and confined places.

I now had another massive washing load to dry with no place to dry it on.

I cleaned the kitchen counters and the window sills and the bay windows and draped all these newly created clean spaces with the washing. Basically any space I could find. By the evening I was pooped.

It was time to call in for external help. I called up Bur. He was an old pal of mine - we went to college together. He was a resourceful person. I met him for dinner and took him through the problem over a few drinks. He understood the gravity of the situation and said he would come over the following morning.

Bur came over on Sunday morning, all business-like and reviewed the situation. "Do you have beer?" I nodded. 

"Ok, lets get to work. I suggest we put the drier on - the heat and rotation will drive the pigeon out."

"What if it doesn't?" The last thing I wanted was to have to clean a dead bird out of the drier.

"It will. It's not stupid."

I reminded him that pigeons were the family of birds that gave us such stalwarts as the the Dodo.

He asked me to open a couple of beers to help him think. We had a couple of beers and after a while he announced grandly, "The pigeon problem has been solved!" We went out to take a look inside the drier. The problem hadn't been solved. Our friend had surreptitiously turned on the power to the drier. We discovered that the machine's safety mechanism did not allow it to be switched on while the door was open. Bur didn't take too kindly to failure.

I shot down his suggestion of closing the door and trying for roast pigeon. And if it works, you can market these as ovens - it is big enough to do a turkey in.

He clapped his hands and made hissing and shooing noises outside the drier. Apart from amusing the pigeon, they did nothing much.

"How about we get a cat?"

I told him that I when I said I did not want to remove a dead bird from the drier, I meant the statement to include not having to clean out feathers and blood as well, just in case he thought otherwise.

I think he got the drift. We had also run out of beer by this time, so Bur decided to push off. 

"I'll think about this and let you know," he added helpfully at the door.

I was on my own again. Me and the pigeon.

There were under two weeks left for my wife to return. And there there were a good six months remaining in the lease of the apartment. I had to get rid of the pigeon.

At office the next day I asked a colleague what to do for animal infestations. "What do you want to get rid of? Cockroaches?" I told her the animal in question was a bit bigger. "Rats?" She asked me. "Still bigger," I told her. She gave me the phone number of a company that got rid of monkeys. I decided I would feel pretty stupid calling them to remove a pigeon from the house and threw the number away.

That night, I thought desperate times call for desperate measures. I set an alarm for two in the morning. I selected Sweet Child of Mine as the song to shake the pigeon out of its slumber. If it didn't want to go the easy way, I would just need to make life a little less comfortable.

I managed to crawl out of bed by about a half past two carrying my music box. The darned bird was awake. I played Sweet Child of Mine on full volume in front of the it anyway. It bobbed in a manner that seemed to me to be keeping time to the music. I played some more loud music going from Pearl Jam to Metallica to Deep Purple. I even tried Louis Armstrong and his horn. I stopped when I was positive the pigeon was enjoying the songs. I couldn't sleep the rest of the night and consequently, getting through office the next day required immense doses of fortitude, a bad temper and caffeine.

Things did not get better when I found a letter from the building's management office asking me to explain the "Sustained loud music that was played from 2.35 am to 3.05 am". They also told me that this was a residential building (Sorry! I thought this was where the Rock DJ auditions were held) and that next time they would take a much stricter view of this. I bumbled through an apology mentioning 'short-circuit', 'electronic malfunction', 'won't happen again', 'very unfortunate', 'irresponsible machines' 'will get to bottom of this technology malfunction' etc. The lady at the office was kind enough not to press the matter. 

I had run out of options. Things got so bad that the next couple of days I caught myself making mewing sounds crawling under the drier hoping to scare the damn bird off.

I didn't know when it ate, if at all it did or if was some sort of mystical pigeon that survived only on the karmic forces flowing through the earth for it never seemed to step out of the drier.

By the time the last weekend before wife returned rolled by, I was ready to have a drink with the pigeon. I took my beer to the utility area. I talked to the pigeon and told him in no uncertain terms, that while his stay had been most enjoyable, there comes a time when to maintain friendship you have to ensure that boundaries are maintained. I think he understood.

The next day I came back from work to find him on the ledge opposite the drier. I made no sudden movements. I curbed the instinct to rush outside and slam the drier door shut. I just went to the fridge and got a beer and had another chat with the pigeon. After my next beer I even got him some fruit loops (he didn't have any though).

The next day, he left. The drier was empty.

I went through the events in my head. I now had all the possible washing done, including clothes and drapes. I had cleaned almost every visible area of the house to dry the clothes on, had managed to get rid of most of the beer and old cereal, had even aired clothes (okay, washed 'em too) and reorganized the cabinets looking for stuff to entice the pigeon. It seemed to me the pigeon was in league with my wife to get me to work. It was fortunate the beer diplomacy worked. One man to another, the pigeon understood the perils of being a husband. Only the other day I found it puffing, cooing and stamping in front of a very disinterested female pigeon. I can only wish him the best.

As for the remainder of the list my wife left for me to do: I went through the rest of the apartment to make sure there were no other lurking creatures to make me work.