To be angry at my mum over an animal in distress

[Corintha]

My mum has just text me in casual conversation to say that there is a pigeon trapped in the chimney vent in her and my dad’s bedroom. She says that they heard it fall down early this morning and it has been in there cooing ever since and is clearly stuck.

I have asked what she intends to do about it, whether she is going to get my dad to take the vent off or call someone in. She doesn’t want to take the vent off as it will be messy and doesn’t want to call anyone out as she says she’s too busy with other life admin (she’s a carer for adult autistic sibling). She says “It’s a shame but it’s life” and she’s just going to leave it and let nature run its course.

I’ve lost my shit with her a bit as she seems okay to lay in bed for the next few nights listening to an animal die in a horrible way. The vent is behind their bed board ffs! I’ve also warned her that the smell is going to be horrendous and she will have flies but she is insisting it will be fine. It’s a vent, of course the smell is going to seep through.

I’ve lost my shit with her a bit and she has told me to go away and blocked me saying “it’s not the first time an animal has died in a chimney and won’t be the last”.

AIBU to think she’s being incredibly thick. I’m so angry at her and I don’t know what to do as I live an hour away and don’t drive, it’s 3 hours away on public transport

Tell her the only reason I found out I had a dead pigeon in my chimney vent was because of the flies. She’ll definitely get them, especially in the summer.

Yes, I do wonder where your very generalized comment is coming from.

Ok cool 👍

What a horrible false equivalence to draw.

She should let the pigeon out, but how someone treats other human beings is much more instructive in determining their character than how they behave towards a single sodding pigeon.

Where is your mum OP?
If you tell us where in the country perhaps someone can go and take the vent off for her? I'll go if she's local to me.

As I've said all ready, the use of "We" is misleading!

I rang my dad as he is usually a bit more reasonable than my mum. The reason he hasn’t been involved prior is as he was working (he is still working full-time despite being beyond state pension age).

He said they are just going to “let it die” and when I said they will have a smell and flies he said “the smell will go upwards and out through the chimney and the pigeon is too far down for any flies to get down there”

Absolutely ridiculous. I hope it stinks the place out and they get a fly infestation. They aren’t usually this thick, I don’t know what’s gotten into them. They seem to be sharing a brain the size of a garden-pea between them. I heard mum in the background during the call saying she could hear it flapping its wings.

I’m fuming. My partner is away at the moment otherwise he’d have driven down and offered to sort it.

Is it odd of me to predict I'd get a response like this? I'm fine with you alleging it's odd.

But I'd call the RSPCA and if they want to rescue it they can do.

I was nice and polite to my parents BTW, I haven’t expressed anything to them directly in angry way. I came to MN to vent about them but I haven’t called them stupid directly. I needed to sound off my anger about them somewhere else.

I said to my mum something along the lines of “If it were me I couldn’t just leave it, maybe try the local Facebook group or look for a wildlife group that will come and take it if dad can get the vent off.” and she said “I’m not faffing about with all of that.” So then I changed my approach and told her I was concerned about the smell, flies and health risks and got told I was being “precious and up myself” and got promptly blocked which is quite common behaviour for her

Well according to my parents it’s “impossible for flies to get down a chimney” so I suppose you and all of the other stories I’ve seen online of people who ended up with flies after a bird died in the chimney are just making it up.

Same here, we can’t get to our chimneys any longer and sadly we have similar problems this year. The crows or larger birds seems to have pushed the chimney covering aside and nested. It’s horrible to hear. Attached neighbour and I are having roof tiles replaced in autumn so will get roofer to renew the covers!

If there was anyway of getting in there I would, but DH won’t let me remove all the kitchen units and take a sledge hammer to the wall. I hope your Dad manages to free the little squab.

The vent has screws and they’ve heard it directly behind the vent, it would take a matter of minutes to free the poor thing. It doesn’t sound as though it’s a baby, mum says it sounds like a large bird. I hope it keeps them awake all night flapping and cooing a mere few inches away from their heads. If they can sleep listening to that then they are utterly shameful.

this is the same mum who once gently helped out a little mouse that was trapped in our green bin when I was a child. She tipped the bin on its side, coaxed the mouse out with food and took it somewhere safe. What on earth has become of her?

"I wouldn't be desperately upset about its suffering."
What a revolting thing to feel.

This is probably just me getting overly emotional and sentimental now from the pregnancy hormones but what if the poor thing has babies waiting for mummy in a nest! I know these things happen but they literally have the option to save it. They are choosing not to because they can’t be arsed

https://www.massaudubon.org/news/latest/why-you-should-appreciate-pigeons#:~:text=People%20used%20them%20for%20meat,were%20allowed%20to%20keep%20them.

This happened to me as a child when a crow came down our chimney and my mum refused to deal with it.

I recognise now as an adult she probably just didn’t have the capacity as a single mum with three kids working multiple jobs. However the memories of hearing it try to climb up, get to the level of my bedroom and clatter back down exhausted time after time until the inevitable, still haunt me to this day :(

That’s horrendous. That’s the sort of thing that sticks with a young child. Not to criticise your mum as it sounds like she was snowed under but if my child came to me upset by an animal being in distress I would have to do something and I’d be touched by my child being so caring towards a creature. I was a sensitive child and I’d have been inconsolable. It’s fine to use the inevitable death of an animal (such as coming across a dead animal in the wild or the death of a pet) to educate your child on mortality, but making your child witness the needless death of an animal when you could attempt to save it together isn’t nice.

Though my mum is a carer to an adult with complex needs (which is hard work and I know takes up a lot of her mental capacity), she absolutely had the time to ask for help on the call FB group. She’s addicted to Facebook and is always scrolling her phone. She hasn’t even tried.

I absolutely understand how upsetting this is. Your post completely resonated due to the above.

Given it’ll require action at some point (in my case my mum had to pay someone to remove the gas fire to get the rotting bird out), it’s just non-sensical and needlessly cruel why they can’t channel that effort upfront and save the bird in the first place. So upsetting to witness.

You’re most certainly not over reacting, it’s horrible.

@Azandmeoh I had this in my classroom too, it was a portakabin and a fox died underneath. The smell was like nothing I’ve smelt before. You’re right, it was in my clothes and my hair…vile!

How is it?

It’s one thing to not really care much about animals or their welfare but it’s a completely different thing to know that an animal is suffering a slow, painful death and you could spare that from happening within a couple of minutes.

I wouldn’t trust her around my DC.

What if you were honest with your mum about for upsetting you find the idea of it, maybe say pregnancy hormones are making you more sensitive but that you can't sleep because you're so sad for the bird, and if you're not willing to rescue the bird for its own welfare could they please do it for you because the amount of stress it's causing you.

Ok maybe you're not quite that affected, but clearly you're very upset by it as would I be.

@Corintha

As you know your parents' location, could you yourself see if there is an organisation that could send someone out to free the pigeon? I know you have work, but in your spare time - perhaps on a lunch break - you could perhaps do a search, or as someone else suggested, call the RSPCA and find out if they can send anyone to help?

I feel really saddened about this poor bird being left to die. I know you can't physically go over there and do anything, but I do want to encourage you to take some steps to see if it's possible to get it released.

Which part of the country do your parents live in?

Just maybe it isn't a case of 'just unscrewing the vent'. If it's that upsetting op then go on her local Facebook group and book someone in to move the bed, and unscrew the vent. Have some compassion yourself.

Her attitude is all that is wrong with the world hen we lose any compassion for other living beings other than humans. What horrors we have turned into. I couldn’t personally sit and listen to that and I wish I had not read this post