What the fuck are the upstairs neighbors doing (oh, that's a lot of damage...)
They broke through.
That was my 'oh fuck' moment. They had already systematically dismantled the bathroom exhaust vents on every other house in the community. Kitchen vents provided a brief haven until they were chased out by imported Australian Rosellas, who in turn fled when the people flatting actually started using the rangehood.
I am, of course, talking about the invasive Mynah bird.
Once they turned their eyes to my bathroom vent, they became single-minded in their destruction. Over the course of two weeks, they cracked away at the plastic blades, peeling them out one by one.
I called the landlord. "Just turn on the bathroom fan," he said dismissively. "They'll bugger off soon enough."
I turned it on. I went outside. The birds continued their assault.
Soon enough, they nested. Every morning at 4-5 am, I was woken by a loud rustling in the ceiling that would continue for hours. I called the landlord again.
"What part of just turn on the bathroom fan don't you understand?"
I explained, very calmly, that the bathroom fan agitated them the wrong way. It redoubled their efforts. The (weak and absolutely didn't meet air flow regulations) fan was also installed too far down the long run pipe.
"There's no windows in the bathroom," I told him. "After a shower, I'll leave the fan running for an hour and still come back to a room full of steam."
"Just open the door then!"
Some part of me thought I could still talk some sense into him. That he was risking moisture damage as well as other issues in the roof. It fell on deaf ears.
Eventually, when the lights in the house started to fail, I called an electrician. A kind and friendly man, he was very happy to sit with me and talk shop while he worked. I nonchalantly plugged into the conversation that the bathroom fan wasn't working. He said the landlord didn't tell him about the issue--he was only here to fix the lights--but he'd be happy to take a look.
Heh. Gottem.
See, there's a reason shitty landlords call their own handymen. This electrician worked for one of the biggest electrical contractors in New Zealand, meaning it was his job to report any issues instead of glossing them over. Our centre-left government had, much to the chagrin of landlords around the country, enacted standards and regulations for housing and rentals.
A bathroom fan was a requirement.
He told me I'd be looking at a very expensive job. My stomach plunged. Talking money with cheap landlords was already difficult. Being yelled at over the phone was bad enough. Still, I pressed on and asked him to call the landlord. Perhaps, dismissively, the landlord thought to save money by getting it all fixed to standard in one go.
I live on the third floor. The bathroom exhaust vent goes out the exterior wall of a high vertical terraced house. Not only that, there were silly, fragile wooden slats that stuck out above the windows that were meant to provide shade, but they were so thin that their existence proved aesthetic and nothing more. To circumvent those fragile slats, the electrician told me that they would have to hire a cherry picker.
There was simply no other way to get up to the roof. He had already climbed into the ceiling and said the vent had to be pulled out from outside. He also told me my insulation didn't meet standards. I laughed. Laughing was the only way to deal with it.
A week later, the cherry picker came. It was hired by the hour. It was expensive. The landlord would have to foot the bill depending on how long the fix took.
The cherry picker malfunctioned during the first hour. He spent another hour on the phone calling Support and trying to get it to work. Somehow, someway, it started ascending again.
"Moment of truth!" he shouted down to me. I remember giving him the thumbs up.
"Now that," he said, "is the worst damage caused by birds I have ever seen."
(For the curious, we found neither eggs nor baby birds in the vent.)
In total, the repairs costed my landlord over $3000. I secretly asked the electrician to get me a stronger fan. He agreed. The long run pipe was just that--too long. So he got me a commercial grade fan and slapped it in.
"They use these babies in the shopping malls," he said with a laugh.
He also replaced the exterior vent. Blades, he said, were an old design and prone to shearing off. Some places use plastic caps, but he warned me not to use them since they made a banging racket when the wind was strong. Instead, he got a exterior vent that pointed downwards, then fitted the opening with a steel mesh and left me with a reassurance no Mynah bird would ever get inside again.
I used that fan for five more years before I left that flat this year. I would never have gotten it fixed if not for regulations regarding housing standards.
The same regulations our newly elected government wants to get rid of.
This post is part of the Microblogvember prompt list.