After work on Friday, as I was about head to my car when my colleague told me that there was a bird trapped in a light.

I know sounds very odd. Well being the resident bird rescuer, I went to find out.

In the past, whenever, a bird gets caught inside one of our classrooms or even our large group instruction room (LGI), I would get the call to try to liberate the bird safely and identified the species at the same time! I have to say thus far, that I have had a 100% success rate.

But around the backside of our LGI, I was about to meet my biggest challenge.

Around the perimeter of the building, there are lights along each exterior wall and I finally came to a light on the far back side that had a rusted cage over it.

For what purpose this cage served I’m not really sure. Perhaps it was to prevent teenagers from throwing rocks at the light to try to break it. (I was a teenager once!)

But now this cage served another purpose, a bird trap, because inside frantically flying about was a bird.

A dark-eyed junco in fact. The adult bird was frantically flying about, being hemmed in by its rusty cage. I could see at the bottom of the cage that there was a 1 inch by 9 inch gap which I assume was how this junco improbably had entered it’s prison. What were the chances?

I grabbed a few sticks hoping to direct the bird toward the gap in the bottom. I poked one stick through and it came out the other side. I figured if I cut off some space above, it would move the junco closer to its freedom.

The junco perch on the stick instead.

The cage was secured onto the wall by four bolts, I figured if we could get our hands on the right wrench, I could remove some bolts and push the cage up and increase the egress. Cue our night custodian.

We borrowed a crescent wrench and I stood up on a plastic folding chair and worked on loosing the two lower bolts. The junco was frantically flying around its rusted cage. The bird was highly stressed and I had to work fast, turning the wrench at quarter turns.

The first bolt came out fairly quickly but the second was a bit more of a challenge. I realized that removing one was not enough and I need the two bottom bolts removed and hoped this would allow me to push up on the cage a create the doorway to freedom!

I pushed up on the cage and willed the junco to fly down. It eventually did find its path to liberty and disappeared into the nearest bush wondering what had just happened, or so I imagine.

Well I certainly did my good deed for the day!!