A woman investigating the source of a strange sound coming from within the walls of her house was shocked to discover the source.
Kirsty Wilkinson-Fox posted a video to her TikTok, @kirstywilkinsonf4, of the moment that she and a close friend, who had come over to help, went running for cover out of the back door after realizing what they were dealing with. “I was working from home and I heard lots of rubble fall into the wall, which was quite odd,” Wilkinson-Fox told Newsweek. “I then started to get freaked out at the fact I could hear something rustling in there.”
That was when Wilkinson-Fox made the call to her good friend and, together, they decided to investigate the source of the sounds, which were now coming from one particular area in the room. “My puppy had started barking at a vent in the wall,” she said. “It’s a chimney breast, which is no longer used and just has a small vent on it. We undid the vent to find lots of rubble and a little foot poking out.”
The video Wilkinson-Fox posted online captures that specific moment and their panicked reaction to seeing the foot poking out. It has already been watched over 2.5 million times on TikTok. “It was very scary at first,” she said. “We were worrying about what it was.”
Wilkinson-Fox was right to be concerned about what it could be. Having heard the sound of “rustling,” she most likely feared the worst: that a rat had gotten into the wall cavity in her home. Rat infestations of any kind should be something all homeowners fear, not least because of the costs involved in getting rid of them.
The home improvement and remodeling website This Old House says it costs an average of $300 to deal with even a small rat infestation. Larger ones, however, can easily cost over $1,000 while additional services such as fumigation could see you footing a bill of anywhere between $2,000 and $6,000.
Thankfully, for Wilkinson-Fox, in this instance, no such services were required. After taking a closer look at the animal limb protruding from the vent, she and her friend realized that it was, in fact, a bird. It transpired that a pigeon had somehow fallen down the old chimney still attached to the property and had become stuck. The “scratching” sound Wilkinson-Fox heard that day was the stricken bird desperately trying to get out.
At first, Wilkinson-Fox wasn’t sure how they could help. “I mean, who do you call to get a bird out of the wall?” she said.
In the end, she was able to enlist the help of a resourceful neighbor who, despite doing a bit of damage to Wilkinson-Fox’s house, was able to rescue the pigeon.
“We had to smash some of the wall out to enable my brave neighbor to put her hand in and get it out,” Wilkinson-Fox said. “She very gently got it out and, luckily, it was absolutely fine. Just a bit scared. We put it in the garden and he eventually flew away.”
It’s the best possible outcome for the pigeon and a satisfactory conclusion to an eventful day at the office for Wilkinson-Fox.
