The best alarm clock in the world is a bird, a blackbird to be precise. I say 'best' in terms of waking me up, in terms of nice ways to wake up then it's more like the 'worst'.

Picture the scene. It's about 6am and I'm in bed fast asleep. I'm a bit of a 9-hours-sleep-minimum person and with my sleep patterns royally screwed up since starting this new contract I'm getting 6 maybe 7 hours a night. This makes Mr. Squirrel a) brain dead until he's had a caffeine boost via a Diet Coke IV, b) a mite testy when first woken up and c) slightly forgetful about minor things like keys, money, phone and occasionally glasses.

So to be woken up at dawn by a cacophony of howls, growls, banging and scratching was incredibly unappreciated. Having been so rudely awoken I staggered, bleary eyed into the front room to find a rather large blackbird going utterly MENTAL on the window sill and a highly amused cat sat watching it like a fat girl would watch a advert for Galaxy chocolate.

Upon seeing me the bird quite literally shat itself. Over the TV too. I then noticed that this was not a unique occurrence in my living room and it was liberally splattered with bird shit.

I made a cup of tea and had a shower. It seemed the pertinent thing to do. I pondered my next move.

The thing is, there's no way it could've got into the flat unless it came down the chimney. That is, unless Floyd brought it in which I doubted because it was bigger than his head, clearly unhurt and well, Floyd is a bit of a pussy when it comes to hunting - he favours the vulture approach (wait for it to die, eat it, be sick on my bed). I reasoned that Pink must have brought it in as a gift, not that I'd seen her yet this year (though I have once seen her drag a very puzzled live rat half her size through the cat flap).

To open the window I had to release the catches from exactly under where this bird was, quite literally, hopping mad. In doing so it scratched me, pecked me and then crapped on me - before indignantly flying off.

Strangely enough I was late for work....

And talking of Pink, guess who was in the flat when I got home from work?! :) She even curled up next to me on the sofa (and still is) and she's not done that for years. I'm still having to separate the two of them every thirty minutes as Floyd gets insanely jealous if he's not the centre of my attention (you'd never guess that Floyd was the male :-P )

I'm not sure if I've posted a picture of Pink before, so here she is tonight (she's such a sweetie):