According to KTLA, the incident occurred on April 21, when Kerri, who wishes to keep her last name anonymous, came home with her husband and child after going out for dinner. There, they found that hundreds of birds had swarmed inside their house after gaining entry through the chimney.
“It’s so hard to explain,” Kerri said. “If you don’t see it with your own eyes, you’d never believe it.”
Footage from the scene shows massive flocks of birds circling the home, and several can be seen swooping down into the chimney. Another clip features dozens of birds gathered along a windowsill inside the home, flapping ferociously from behind the glass.
“We lost count after 800,” she said.
Kerri says the family was told by local animal control to simply leave their doors open so the birds could leave. But the creatures were stubborn and stayed put.
While Kerri, her husband, and her child decided to stay in a hotel for the night, a relative, Patrick Belleville, tried to get the situation under control.
“They acted like they wanted to get out, but they wasn’t going nowhere,” Belleville told KTLA. “They were just flying around, just everywhere, every room in the house, every bathroom.”
Belleville dressed in a hood and mask to protect himself from the flocks. “They were just beaming off my head,” he said.
Even worse than the birds themselves is what they left behind. According to Kerri, the entire home became covered in bird droppings. “You couldn’t walk in any spot in the living room, the kitchen and the hallway without stepping on bird droppings,” she said.
Unfortunately, Kerri and her family are not alone in experiencing this peculiar type of home invasion. On Monday, hundreds of birds became trapped in the chimney of a house in nearby Montecito. The Montecito Fire Department helped free the thousand or so birds, which had luckily been blocked from entering the home by a fireplace covering, according to their official Instagram page.
In both cases, it appears the birds are migrating north and are entering the homes as they pass through the Southern California region. Specifically, the birds’ behavior suggests that they are Vaux’s swifts, a type of swift that is known to make its home in chimneys, according to KTLA.
