Did you ever see birds flying around the inside of a store?

Big stores with automatic doors have a hard time keeping birds out. I’ve seen them in grocery stores and Home Depots. I don’t know for sure, but I figure they must do fine, or else we wouldn’t see so many there. I see pigeons underground, like some kind of cave bird. We are seeing evolution in progress. Cave birds and store birds. The only kind of bird I’m sure we won’t see, is window banging birds.

Or maybe not. All the softheaded birds will die, leaving only hardheaded birds to reproduce.

I’ve seen them in mine too, and wondered the same thing!

I have seen them in Home Depot but oddly, not Lowes. I have asked employees about them and they say there is little that can be done…..they also said that the birds have figured out how to trip the automatic doors so they can go in and out…..

Of even greater curiousity…..why aren’t they at Lowes? Or Costco? Or Sam’s Club…?

Yeah, they’re everywhere. I like to think I’m shopping in a jungle made of cardboard when I see them. :D

I’ve hummed James Bond music while sneaking around corners with finger guns looking for feathered ninjas with friends before.

The most appropriate, most aesthetic as well, in-use indoor environment I’ve seen birds is at a coffee shop in town here. It’s smallish, has high ceilings, the walls are painted a deep green that’s faded with time. The floor is original exposed wood, the furniture is all wood antique-kitschy character pieces, the front of the shop is essentially two large windows with a door in the middle which also has a large top to bottom glass pane in it which lets in a lot of light. In the back of the shop there’s a door that leads out to a quite, semi-private patio full of wrought iron chairs and tables, and to one side of the patio is a large maple tree that’s growing up the side of the building next to the coffee shop.

In the spring and summer finches readily take up residence in the tree and they often fly into the coffee shop, or bounce in chasing errant bagel crumbs. I remember one day when the sun was coming in through the front of the shop and the light, seemingly danced with the air as the particulates and bursts of steam from the espresso machine drifted almost with a sense of contentment at the truth of their purpose, when a finch shot in through the back door and out the front almost too fast to notice. It was quite a perfect moment, the colours, the heady aromas, the sweet spring air blowing through the open doors, the quiet chatter of the other patrons.

I didn’t mean to get so… poetic, but I couldn’t help it ;)

I’ve seen ravens causing a ruckus in a market before as well, who knew a zucchini could be used to shoe away ravens.

I’ve seen a bird flying in a Dollar Tree a few years ago. I’ve also seen a bird fly through this shirt store in San Francisco. It has two sets of doors on two corners of the building and a bird flew through it. They said it happens all the time.

Sometimes they figure it out themselves. Rarely.
Sometimes someone manages to catch them. Hard to do.
Sometimes they injure themselves and get caught.
Sometimes they more than just injure themselves. =(

There used to be this liquor store by my old house
that had a dead bird trapped between
the window pane and cardboard adverts.

Every time I walked by that liquor store, it made me angry
just thinking about how no one bothered to save it.
And in death, no one bothered to give it a little dignity.

I would go in and plead with the owner to remove it.
I was much too young (grade school) to have thought
to call animal control. (That’s just unsanitary.)
He would just shrug. It’s already dead, he said.

I watched that poor guy decay in that window.
It wasn’t until the store switched owners
that the little guy got a little dignity in death.

I’ve also seen them at indoor malls. I imagine they can live quite well in there. There are live trees, skylights, fountains to drink from and plenty of Auntie Anne’s pretzel crumbs :)

@augustlan That’s a happy fifth alternative. I like happy!
Sometimes they decide that they quite like it there.

A small bird was in my small store once. I caught it and set it free.

Awwww…lurve for that.

yes i did i did i did!!! in my local tesco… upstairs…
it was a tiny little thing
there was something quite magical and bittersweet about seeing a bird flying around in a huge space inside
strange

I have seen them at Sam’s. They have long nets which catch the birds. The employees use a lift to get them out and release them.

Yep. Some birds have figured out that flying in tight circles by the door sensor will open the door. Some stores don’t mind birds, and some stores try to evict them.

I’ve seen birds in lots of stores, the most interesting being the local mall where they have a few actual trees inside. I bet there’s better food at the Home Depot or Meijer, though.

Yes. Not in PetCo. only, but in Target or whatever.

@Snoopy : I see them all the time in Costco… or maybe cause I sorta work there so I am in an out of them alot…

I asked once there response was to expensive to hire a Animal Catcher, especially since it happens so frequently.

For the record I don’t work for Costco… I just happen to work inside them.

The bird flies in so you buy a cat to catch the bird, the cat goes off its way and can’t be found so you get a dog to find the cat, and so on and so forth…. Till you have grocery shopping and a petting zoo.

Thats what I think of everytime I see a Jungle Jims that is.. I think thats the name of the store.

@KingMalefic: That’s what he said.

@KingMalefic That is kinda starting to sound like ‘the Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly’ children’s story….

@Snoopy : She could have had a petting zoo, if she didn’t sallow that fly. That was a missed entrepreneurial oppurtunity.

I worked in a store where people came in and out a lot. There was a week where two separate times a bird got into the store. We have a small store. One was flying around and in the process of trying to catch it, to put it outside I knocked over five bottles of organic massage oil, getting glass and oil everywhere. A man saw the commotion, (we also have large glass windows) came in and with one foul swoop (no pun intended) snatched the bird up! It bit him and fled off.
The second time, I was at the make-up kiosk trying on a new color we were selling with my co-worker. My friend screamed at something, then I saw what looked like a huge rock fly by my face and screamed myself. The large bird went smashing into the cabinets. A woman came running in, possibly thinking we were being attacked, and sighed disapprovingly at our lipstick stained mouths and cheeks. (obviously applied that way during the incident) It wasn’t hurt just confused I guess, since it allowed me to pick it up and take it out side.
My friend insisted the birds were signs for me but I have no clue what about. I did know though that I had to clean up a oily/glassy mess and scrub “Hot Date” lipstick off my face for 15 minutes.

@Jamspoon sounds like a great place to sit.

I have seen quite a few crazy birds latley that won’t get out of the street, or fly right into your windshield.

Our local Homer Depot has them and the management seems to think it’s cool, until someone gets to the service desk with a head full of poop!

It happens often enough that there’s probably an exterminator in the area who travels with a pellet gun. HR freaked out one day – prior to my employment – when she saw someone toting such a device around the store after closing time. Good stuff.