dead bird in the basement! (apartments, rental, house)

[pbergen]

so i was at my parents' house over the weekend and had to go down to the basement to dig up some old books. i turned on the lights, and as i was rummaging through some boxes, i thought i saw something lying on the ground underneath an old coffee table. i looked underneath the table and, to my surprise, saw a dead black bird.

as you can imagine i was pretty grossed out, but i was also completely at a loss as to how the bird could've ended up there. the only entrances to the basement are a couple of small windows that are closed year round and the door from the foyer - and that door is closed 99% of the time, too. there is also no fireplace, air duct, or other opening from the outside.

besides, if a bird had somehow flown into the house over the past week or two, there is no way my parents wouldn't have heard the commotion from upstairs.

after carefully disposing of the bird, my dad and i discussed how the bird might have gotten inside the house. it didn't seem to have been there for more than a week or two, as there wasn't any noticeable decomposition or odor. there also didn't appear to be any visible trauma to the bird's body (sometimes birds accidentally kill themselves by flying directly into a window pane; other times, they're mauled by other animals and left for dead on the sidewalk).

my dad's conclusion? the pse&g guy planted it there (no offense to anyone who works for that company).

apparently, a worker from pse&g stopped by the house a week ago to check the gas meter in the basement. he's the only person who's been down in the basement recently besides my parents. and the location of the dead bird - hidden under a low-lying table in a dimly-lit area of the basement - couldn't have been an accident.

what gives? why would this guy do something like this? is he hoping we're a superstitious family (we're not) who'll interpret the discovery of the bird as a bad omen? is he just that petty?

ultimately it wasn't a big deal, but i was pretty ticked off that someone would stoop to such lengths over god knows what. if he's upset at my family for something, why can't he express that verbally rather than do something so foul and nasty?

[findinghope]

do your parents have a cat? could it be that a cat got to the bird and brought it home?
it seems kind of demented for a person to kill a bird and carry it to some stranger's house. just doesnt make any sense...

[wileynj]

Originally Posted by findinghope

do your parents have a cat? could it be that a cat got to the bird and brought it home?
it seems kind of demented for a person to kill a bird and carry it to some stranger's house. just doesnt make any sense...

Agreed...

[STrapani1105]

yeah, that's really strange. i don't think a human would do that unless he was really messed up in the head or something. it was definately some kind of an animal. it could have been a cat or dog. my dog has killed chipmunks and walked right into the house them in his mouth. if your parents do not have a pet, it could have been a neighbor's pet. my neighbor's cat gets into my basement all the time, I have no idea how. I don't really mind, I just let him come and go as he pleases.

[pbergen]

my parents don't have any dogs, cats, or other animals in the house. in fact, we never had any pets growing up.

[pbergen]

Originally Posted by STrapani1105

yeah, that's really strange. i don't think a human would do that unless he was really messed up in the head or something. it was definately some kind of an animal. it could have been a cat or dog. my dog has killed chipmunks and walked right into the house them in his mouth. if your parents do not have a pet, it could have been a neighbor's pet. my neighbor's cat gets into my basement all the time, I have no idea how. I don't really mind, I just let him come and go as he pleases.

there's no way the neighbor's cats or dogs could've gotten into our house without my parents noticing. besides, it's never happened in the 20+ years that my family has lived there.

and not only are the basement door and windows always closed, the front door and garage doors are only open for seconds at a time.

[timneh5]

Birds will sit near exhaust on the chimney or exhaust pipe from the furnace to keep warm and get "drunk" from the fumes and fall in. Once inside, they eventually wake up and can't get back out.

I'm sure PSE&G had nothing to do with it.

[pbergen]

Originally Posted by timneh5

Birds will sit near exhaust on the chimney or exhaust pipe from the furnace to keep warm and get "drunk" from the fumes and fall in. Once inside, they eventually wake up and can't get back out.

I'm sure PSE&G had nothing to do with it.

the chimney does not connect with the basement, so that isn't a possibility.

i suppose the basement heater theory can't be ruled out, but from what i recall there isn't any connection to the outdoors.

oh, i forgot to mention the other reason why my dad suspects the pse&g guy:

my parents own a building elsewhere in north jersey that has some rental apartments. the building is routinely fumigated and the tenants say they've never had issues with vermin.

but a few years ago, one of the tenants called my dad because there was a dead mouse lying on the rug of his living room. the mouse was flattened like it had been run over by a car, which would suggest that it had been brought in from the outside.

the tenant had never seen any rodents in the apartment and had only been gone from his place for about six hours. during that time, a maintenance guy had had access to his apartment to look at something, and had come and gone several times. the only conclusion the tenant could come up with was that this guy had planted it there. the tenant also believed he was targeted because he's gay and/or the maintenance guy took umbrage to some of the, um, saucy photos hanging on the walls.

so at least in my dad's mind, there's a precedent. perhaps there's an alternate explanation for this earlier incident, but it sure was strange.

i hope the reason for the dead bird is as innocuous as you're suggesting. it just seems so implausible that a) a bird got into the basement and b) wasn't noticed by my parents as it flew around the room. but since i'll never know for sure, i'll try to convince myself that it got in through the heater somehow.

[Calico696]

Originally Posted by pbergen

my dad's conclusion? the pse&g guy planted it there (no offense to anyone who works for that company).

No offense to your Dad, but that's really far reaching. Why would a PSE&G guy do something like that?

[joe moving]

Birds can find their way in very small places...