Technology Has Its Uses

‘Stop it, Jess,’ cried Rebecca, the mother of the household.
‘What’s the noise all about?’ asked Simon with annoyance, bowling into the kitchen. He was, after all, the man about the house and liked to stamp his authority on the chaos that ensues from time to time.
‘She won’t stop barking!’ Rebecca replied.
‘I know that, but what’s she barking about?’ Simon went over to the corner of the kitchen where Jess was barking her head off and gave her a clip round the ear.
‘Stop it!’ he scowled at her, but she wouldn’t. Jess turned her head around to Simon for a second to acknowledge him but quickly poked her nose back down to the piece of skirting, sniffing at the mystery that interested her, only to resume the incessant barking.
Gemma, the newly teenaged daughter, ran in to see what was going on. ‘What’s wrong with Jess?’ she asked, her little frame covered in an oversized sweat-shirt that went down to her knees.
‘She must have found something down there,’ Simon decided.
Gemma and Rebecca looked at each other.
‘A mouse,’ they said in a whisper together, and then screamed, tearing over to the cluster of chairs around the table to stand on one each.
Simon enjoyed this moment.
‘Don’t be so silly,’ he said, after a lengthy and dramatic sigh with his hands firmly placed on his hips. ‘Let me take a look.’
Pushing Jess aside, he saw the hole where the builders had forgotten to replace a small edge of skirting board after the refurb and knelt down.
Jess continued to bark at his ear, so he turned around and raised his hand to her as a warning, but she wouldn’t stop.
‘Oh, blast it! Take Jess out to the garden, will you, Rebecca?’ he shouted over the din, but Rebecca wasn’t about to budge, so he dragged Jess to the back door and put her outside.
Returning to the hole, he lifted his trousers up at his thighs and went to kneel down again. ‘Hmmm,’ he went on, offering no explanation.
When the girls felt sure that he could see inside the hole, they whispered over to him. ‘What is it? What is it?’
‘It appears to be a bird of some sort,’ he replied softly.
‘A bird?’ gawped Rebecca, first with surprise. ‘A bird,’ she repeated, suddenly realising how stupid she must have looked up there with her legs crossed on a chair.
‘What sort of bird is it, Dad?’ asked Gemma, jumping down.
‘I don’t know what sort of bird it is,’ replied Simon, ‘but it’s definitely a bird. Can you hear it tweeting?’
Everyone stayed quiet for an instant, and there it was, a little tweet-tweet coming from the hole.
‘What shall we do?’ asked Rebecca, jumping down.
‘Let’s have a think,’ said Simon, to which Rebecca rolled her eyes at Gemma.
‘Can I call the NSPCB, Dad?’ asked Gemma. ‘Please? We’ve got to save it!’
‘Just hang on a minute,’ said Simon, weighing up the options in his mind, finding none, and then acting as if he was onto a cunning plan.
‘Can I have a look?’ asked Gemma as she knelt down to join her father by the hole.
Simon nodded with a smile and so Gemma dropped her head to the floor and angled it sideways to look inside.
‘It’s beauuuutiful, and it’s so small. It must be a baby,’ she said in awe, her head limp with wonderment. She tried to fit her hand inside but the gap was too small, so she offered her index finger for the bird to perch on, to no avail.
‘I could try and jemmy the rest of the skirting board out,’ suggested Simon.
‘The bird might get caught when you pull it out,’ said Rebecca.
Gemma winced.
As the bird carried on tweeting, Simon, Gemma and Rebeecca racked their brains for possible solutions to the problem of releasing the bird.
Just then, Robert, the youngest son, came in from the garden through the back door, covered in mud. Jess squeezed past him as he opened the door and scrambled over to the hole to resume his sniffing/barking exercise.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ said Simon, rubbing his forehead.
Robert stood at the door, inspecting the bewildered faces of his family, surprised that his mother hadn’t mentioned anything about the mud yet.
‘What’s wrong with you lot?’ he asked, ‘and what’s Jess up to?’
‘He’s found a bird, down there,’ said Gemma, pointing to the hole.
‘Cool,’ said Robert. ‘Is it alive?’
‘Yes, Robert,’ said Rebecca, ‘it’s alive. We’re trying to save it.’
‘Can we keep it?’ asked Robert, trudging mud over to Jess and the hole.
The din of canine torment made the chaos in Simon’s mind unbearable, so he took Jess by the collar again and dragged her out to the garden again.
‘Firstly,’ he said on returning to the scene, ‘we need to establish how the bird got there.’
‘It probably flew in to keep warm,’ Robert said.
‘That’s stupid,’ said Gemma.
‘No it’s not,’ said Robert.
‘Birds have nests to keep warm in,’ said Rebecca.
‘So where’s the nest?’ asked Robert.
There was a silence, then Simon held up his hand.
‘I’ve got it’ he said. ‘The builders said something about a gap between the brickwork and the plasterboard, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, it’s called insulation,’ remarked Rebecca.
Gemma smaned under her breath.
‘Alright, cleverclogs, insulation,’ quipped Simon. ‘So, assuming the bird fell from its nest..’
‘Don’t call it an it, Dad,’ said Robert, ‘it’s a he or a she.’
‘Quiet, Robert, I’m thinking!’
‘Now there’s a thing,’ said Rebecca sardonically, causing Gemma to sman again.
As Simon was onto something, he ignored Rebecca’s comment. ‘Supposing the nest is directly above the hole, perhaps in the whatsitcalled that holds the gutter up outside.’
‘The soffit and fascia board,’ said Rebecca, more thoughtfully this time.
‘Yes, that’s it. The nest must be inside the soffit.’
Simon walked quickly over to the back door, opened it and walked onto the patio as Jess tried to squeeze past him, unsuccessfully. Gemma, Rebecca and Robert watched from inside as he looked up at the fascia board.
‘There’s a little gap behind the gutter and I can see some twigs and bits of..whatsitcalled?’
‘Foliage,’ said Rebecca.
They all ran over to the back door and joined him on the patio. Jess made it inside and started barking at the hole again as they looked up to where Simon pointed.
‘That must be it! That’s the nest! Oh, well done, Dad,’ cried Gemma.
‘So,’ wondered Simon, ‘how do we get the bird out of the hole and back to its.. his or her... nest?’
‘We need the step-ladders. Then we could put the bird back into the nest,’ said Rebecca.
‘Good idea, but how do we get it out of the hole? That’s the real problem,’ said Simon.
They trooped back into the kitchen and stood around the hole as Jess yelped and barked at it.
‘Come on, Jess, out you go,’ said Simon, dragging her out through the door again.
The next hour was spent trying one thing after another. Frustration mounted as the bird’s tweeting came and went.
Just as they had exhausted all options, James sauntered into the kitchen to get some toast. The death-tech anarchist of sixteen planted the bread into the toaster, blissfully unaware of the chaos around him as he listened to The Vapid Professors through the earphones of his ipod.
Gemma rolled her eyes at him and Rebecca sighed. Robert laughed and Simon scowled.
As he turned to get some milk and butter from the fridge, he sensed something was up and took his earphones out to rest on his shoulders.
‘What’s up with you lot?’ he asked.
‘There’s a bird stuck in that hole over there and we’re trying to get it out,’ said Simon.
‘As if you care,’ quipped Gemma, pulling her sweat-shirt further down her legs.
James carried on with his milk and butter mission and walked back to the toaster.
Before spreading his toast (it needed to cool down anyway), James flicked through his ipod’s directory and found the birdsong that he enjoyed listening to on the bus ride to college.
Placing the ipod at the hole, the bird heard its calling and immediately popped out from the hole to perch on the device.
‘Where do you want it?’ he asked.
‘It needs to go back up into its nest, James,’ said Simon.
‘Where is it?’
‘Up the step-ladder outside and you’ll see a little hole behind the gutter.’
‘OK,’ said James, picking up the ipod carefully.
Everyone stood transfixed, silent if only to will the bird to keep calm.
As James walked over to the back door, Simon remembered that Jess was outside.
‘Hold on,’ he said, ‘I’ll just get Jess out of the way.’
James waited, looking at the little bird stood faithfully on his ipod as his father grabbed jess’ lead to take her for a walk around the block.
Once the coast was clear, he walked to the step-ladder and found the hole. Placing the ipod as close as he could to the hole, he flicked the bird into it and made his way back down the steps.
Gemma and Robert said nothing as he entered the kitchen and proceeded to butter his toast.
Tears of joy rolled down Rebecca’s cheeks as he waltzed back up to his black-painted room.