The big dipper

Boy!  Talk about ungrateful.  We get high winds here.  Living on an island you see.  And when you're on a small hill on an island with no protection from a giant hunking mountain like Wellington, we cop it pretty hard sometimes.  Where we are the westerlies get us the most.  It leaves our front verandah with old and slightly rotted palings flapping in the wind like a lose baby tooth needing to be yanked.  The winds lift off anything unsecured and whip it around the paddocks.  Your if left on the line could quite easily be wrapped around next door's cows and your underwear found somewhere near the airport.  Our chimney cover has taken flight on the odd occasion even we thought it was secure.  It was found a few months later lodged high up in a tree looking like some sort of small lost space ship.  Well that's what the chooks thought it was.  We're yet to put it back (see long list of jobs to do) and as a result the starlings find hours of entertainment pushing each other down our chimney.  You'd think word would have got around starling circles that it's a bit risky.  Bennie, our ever vigilant Cocker Spaniel is right onto this one.  He checks the fire places every morning.  He hears them scratching around at the top and goes bananas.  As he did this morning.  I have to open the glass door of the unlit fireplace to prove to him that there is nothing there.  And so I did.  And so I was wrong.  Bloody starling comes belting out throwing itself at all and sundry.  By this stage both Max the ragdoll cat and Bennie are on the chase.  Bennie won't kill a bird, it's not his breeding, he's a retrieval dog and Max, well unless it comes in a pouch or a tin with a picture of a cat on it, he's just not interested.  I've tried feeding him cooked and raw meat in the past and the look of disgust on his face was disturbing.  So starling disappears within seconds.  Gone.  Big house and one loose starling.  Oh, and I forgot to mention the other outdoor cat who's sound asleep on our bed upstairs.  Yes, ahem, outdoors!  So after a small slightly interested search and about ready to leave it to some of the more interested parties, I discover a starling lying beside the fireplace, dazed.  I swiftly pick it up in a clean tea towel (you're not getting the good ones), and as I do this it instantly wakes up and starts squealing like a stuck pig.  I take it outside and release it.  Still screaming blue murder, it swiftly takes flight upwards.  Then I look up to see a few more lined up to do exactly the same thing.  Guy's it's not a theme park you know!