Shovelling S**t

Today, 1st May is a public holiday in France. So, no builders. Sue and I decided to take advantage of having the house to ourselves, and clear out the pigeonnier at the loft level. Originally we had intended to put the en-suite facilities for bedroom 4 into the pigeonnier but then we realised that the door is only about 1.5 metres high. However, we could put the hot water tank in there! We therefore started to clear out the mound of guano that was covering the floor and even holding the door half open.

The problem was that we had to get the bird pooh out of the pigeonnier, down a ladder into the salon, down the outside stairs to the road and then in to our trailer which I was towing behind the mower, down to the compost heaps. We became a team, with me filling buckets and then passing them to Sue at the top of the ladder.

So, poor Sue had the short straw. She had to take the buckets down the ladder, down the stairs and empty them into the trailer! She'll sleep well tonight.

As you can see the bird droppings were about 60cm (2 ft.) deep. When I say bird droppings, it was actually all pigeon droppings with a few owl pellets.

In the course of clearing it all out, we found mummified young squabs (young pigeons) , and Sue carried out an autopsy on an owl pellet. It contained 3 shrew skulls!

We thought that we would get the room cleared but , after having to build a second compost bay to take all of the droppings, and after 6 trailer-loads, we were beaten. There's one more trailer load to move!

However we were pleased with our days work, nearly as pleased as sipping a glass of wine at the end of the day!