I just spent a most...shall we say, interesting, morning with a little brown sparrow stuck to a piece of white cardboard. However, that interesting morning might never have needed to happen if some homeowners took note of exactly what it was their pest traps caught and took precautions to ensure it didn't happen.

See, my mother was standing on our back porch looking at the butterflies when she realised there was a small untidy brown heap of bird lying by the clothes rack. Upon closer inspection, she realised it was thrashing about and thought it might be dying. So she called me out from the dining room. At first, when I noticed the little ants crawling about on its body, I thought it really was dying - you know how ants salvage almost anything to bring back to their nest for food, no matter its size (or maybe you don't) - but my father, ever the optimist (only when it comes to animals, though), thought it might just be tired. Not to mention thirsty.

He fashioned a nest for it out of dry grass, a few leaves and an empty flower pot; I fed it some water and it really did seem to become more alert - Singapore's hot and humid weather is deadly to everyone and everything, I tell you.

Unfortunately, I dripped some water onto its eye by accident, and, like everyone else, the bird did not appreciate that at all, though it had been grateful for the water...it jumped off the bed of leaves and scuttled away behind the row of flower pots.

And so the mad chase began. It became slightly more frenzied when we realised the piece of cardboard was actually stuck to its back by some kind of glue, and that was why it had been scrambling about on the ground. That accompanied the thought that my father had been right in his optimism, and it wasn't dying at all. Just...stuck.

Which hardly improved its situation, really.

In any case, we managed to catch it after some minutes of dragging flower pots away and holding back prickly branches (my garden is something of a jungle). Ironically, the cardboard that was causing it so much irritation allowed us to get hold of it more easily!

My father then proceeded to snip what cardboard we could away from its body, and then gingerly pried the section of cardboard that was stuck to its back away. The cardboard left a sticky coating of glue on its back; even so, before we could attempt to clean it, the sparrow darted out of the pot and dashed away to some unknown corner. We examined the pieces of cardboard and realised it was a cockroach trap that had trapped a sparrow, instead.

While that was a refreshing change from reading the papers till the news of gore and death came out of my ears, it would not have had to happen if homeowners took note of just where they placed their pest traps or the types of traps they bought. Surely there is a better alternative to a small square of sticky glue that would at most catch one or two cockroaches (and maybe the odd sparrow, too)?
What about pesticides? Or even the ever reliable - and definitely more selective - rolled up newspaper or slipper?

Now, I love birds and always welcome their visits, whether their intent is to look for a place to die, nest or just a search for breakfast, but I would rather not have them arriving on the backs of pest traps.

Is that really too much to ask?

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