To be angry at my mum over an animal in distress

I'd never look at my mum in the same light again. Ehat a severe lack of emotional intelligence. Poor pigeon. It's probably just a fledgling: a baby. Can you call a local wildlife rescue or even a chimney sweep?

My bad, there's an article on the help wildlife site, which encourages taking action yourself to free the animal. Although if that's not possible I still think it's worth calling. The article also confirms your suspicions that a dead bird could be a health hazard
https://www.helpwildlife.co.uk/advice/chimneys/

BTW there is a possibility your mum might actually be breaking the law! Various laws exist to prevent the unnecessary suffering of animals. I wasn't sure whether they applied to animals who lodge themselves in your chimney but this website suggests they do https://www.realflame.co.uk/blog/what-to-do-if-a-bird-gets-stuck-in-your-chimney/

So, if there's no way of getting hold of your mum and you don't mind going nuclear you could always try the police.

Disclaimer: I'm not legally qualified and not sure the police would do anything, just trying to think of options.

OP, why doesn’t your DM just call a chimney sweep to deal with it? They must be used to birds getting stuck in chimneys. On one occasion, my DSis called a chimney sweep out, who said birds were nesting in her chimney and that he would come and move the nest once the fledglings had gone. (Obviously she wasn’t about to have a fire, either!)

How balanced and reasonable.

We have had birds sometimes in one of our chimneys. It’s fully blocked off inside the house so unfortunately unless I wanted to smash into the brick work anything that falls in stays in.

It’s getting capped when the new flashing goes on.

I’m sure mum or dad will get fed up of hearing it by bedtime tonight and dad will likely unscrew the vent if it really is that easy.

Call the RSPCA.

I mean, they definitely won’t get pigeon lung from that, but they deserve it.

That’s disgusting. And it’s not “life”, it’s her fault for not having a properly sealed off chimney! So she should do something about it.

As someone who spends my time and money rehabbing pigeons, people like her make my blood boil. If only karma was real.

If she doesn’t have the capacity to do a 10 minute job or ask her DH to do it - then SS need to be called because she’s obviously not capable of looking after herself, let alone a vulnerable person.

Are you saying she’s so burnt out that she needs to be put in a care home?

I’m struggling to think of how ‘burnt out’ you have to be that it’s ok to be cruel and simply not care about a living thing suffering and in pain but still deemed well enough to take care of yourself and others.

I agree that this is her DH’s problem too and as OP has said, he’s more than capable of doing it but I’m assuming that as OP is now blocked, she can’t actually get hold of her dad.

Yep, and a million flies this time of year. Good luck to her, payback for being cruel. And she really needs to sort out a cowl on the chimney.

I'm wondering how much effort it would actually take for her to get some help for the pigeon. There's a website www.helpwildlife.co.uk where you can put in your postcode and find your nearest rescue centre. Some rescues will come out and do all the work, so she just has to be at home, and maybe clear up a bit of mess after.

Although I realise she has also blocked you, so not sure how you'd get this info to her.

Very harsh on both you and the pigeon tbh!

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel please stop looking for excuses, the mum just sounds cruel with her ‘it won’t be the last to die’ comment , that’s pretty cold

Speak to your dad, I have these vents and it’s 4 small screws, it would take a few minutes to remove grab the pigeon and pop it outside.
They should have a grill on the chimney but she sounds like she’s a bit sadistic so probably won’t get one fitted.

Just to add to my previous message, we also had to get a new chimney flue fitted to stop it happening again so it was quite an expensive rescue.

Very cruel, I’m glad she will have to endure the smell if she doesn’t get the poor thing out.

If she doesn't care about the pigeon she will certainly care when it dies and decomposes. The smell will be horrific, for weeks.

See I think the op should be thinking about the reasons why her mum doesn’t feel able to do what seems like it ought to be quite a simple job which could avoid great unpleasantness later, even aside from the cruelty issue.
If my elderly parents were telling me this it would be a red flag that they were not coping and might need more support.

How cold!

I'd be totally disgusted with her too - there's things that happen in life that need dealing with and this would be such a simple thing to do.

I know many people dislike pigeons but they're actually really lovely birds and it saddens me that someone can be so blase about a living creature suffering.

Are there any pigeon rescues that you can contact online? Or is she too prissy about mess to let them in?

I can't even imagine ever letting something needlessly die when I could free it.

I'm in a semi and heard a bird in the chimney a few weeks ago. Got a chimney sweep out. Had to remove the electric fire and he pushed his brush up. Unfortunately it wasn't in my side of chimney but in neighbours. Their fireplace has some sort of boarding over it and they weren't interested in doing anything to save it so I had to listen to it scratching for several more days until it presumably died. I hope their house stinks now, horrible people.
Chimney sweep did say he gets lots of call outs after birds have died because people don't realise how bad the smell will be ....they just don't care or want to pay until there's a problem affecting them.
Maybe you could persuade your dad to call a sweep out to try to rescue the pigeon OP?

What I think of your mum would get me deleted or banned.

They could take the cover off the vent and find the bird higher or lower and not reach it.

The bird is likely to die.

We had one behind our fire place. In a position we couldn't reach. It died and then rotted

Chimney's are designed to suck the air from the room up the chimney so unlikely the smell will get into their bedroom. We didn't get a smell.

The flies on the other hand will be like a horror movie and will last for 3-5 days. We ended up with hanging the sticky tape and using smoke bombs from Amazon.

We've since paid to have a cap put on the top of the chimney so it doesn't happen again

Actually, dehydration will probably kill it before starvation.

And then hopefully the corpse will dehydrate/mummify rather than decomposing.

I say hopefully because that would be aroma-free.

Vents like that don't just slide out.

She would have to remove the blanking board from the hearth, and then pay someone to refit it and re-plaster it.

So she would end up with a several-hundred-pound bill for a fucking pigeon.

Chicken-nuggets anyone?

That’s just cruel 😞

We had one stuck behind our gas fireplace. RSPB/A or vet cannot do anything without you creating the access to the area (removing the vent). We were advised to leave it to die and it shouldn’t smell, we had to cap off the gas and smash the concrete behind the fire to get it out as I couldn’t bear to leave it in there. Took it to the vet to be checked over and released it.