Monday, July 19, 2010

Is that a bird nest in my dryer vent?

A few weeks ago, I noticed that the dryer was taking an extremely long time to dry clothes. After making sure everything was attached properly, I determined that something was blocking our outside vent. Because we live on the second floor of an apartment building, our dryer vent is about 7000 million feet above ground. I called maintenance to have them come and blow out our vent. One week and 3 phone calls later, they finally show up, blow air through the vent and out pops a HUGE bird nest! But instead of pulling the vent flap (or whatever that thing is called) back down, they left it open, and guess what! The birds came back and rebuilt that nest! We could see them flying in and out of the vent while we sat in our living room. I think they were taunting me: "We are building a nest and there is nothing you can do about it". Stupid birds! Once again, I placed a call to maintenance, because not only was the nest making it next to impossible for our clothes to get dry, it was also a fire hazard. And I knew if our apartment caught on fire, a bird nest would be the least of our problems. After numerous phone calls over the span of 10 days (and one threat about calling the fire department to take care of the nest!), maintenance FINALLY showed up to remove the nest. Instead of using the blower thingy, they used a very tall ladder and their hands to remove the nest...bare hands! No gloves! I don't even want to think about what type of rash that guy may develop. Birds are dirty creatures.