Can You Spare-ow a Cigarette?

If you don’t smoke, consider yourself lucky. There’s really no upside to pumping volumes of intensely polluted air into your lungs. I hear it makes chasing squirrels a bitch.

I admit I partook in a little puff of the cancer inducing sticks during my youth, particular during the peer pressure days of obedience school. I didn’t enjoy the experience, maybe because it took away from the taste of the beers I was imbibing. I learned from experience that cigarettes weren’t for me. Bo says No to cigarettes.

Alas, a sparrow in the UK had to learn the hard way too. Here’s his story from the Metro.

A sparrow with a habit of feathering its nest with cigarette ends caused a fire at a shop that caused £250,000-worth of damage.

At first Paul Sheriff, who runs Crescent Stores in Leasingham, Lincolnshire, was at a loss as to what caused the blaze.

But six weeks on from the blaze, the 48-year-old was told by insurance investigators that they discovered 35 cigarette ends in the roof.

Their conclusion was that a sparrow must have picked up a smouldering butt to feather its nest in the roof’s eaves, thus causing the blaze.

‘I’ve certainly never come across this sort of thing before. It’s strange to think how such a little bird armed with such a small object could cause such chaos.’

Apparently he’s never had a woodpecker bang away at his house. I know that’s not a funny line now, but you haven’t read my book yet. Don’t worry, it will be in bookstores Sept/Oct of this year. Then you can find out the chaos a woodpecker can create on an unsuspecting family.

Photo by Brian Klaus