It started with a tap. Not the soft kind, like a polite knock on the door, but a sharp, persistent staccato, as if the universe had hired the world’s most relentless percussionist to set up shop outside Hank Driscoll’s bedroom window. Hank, of course, did what any reasonable person would do at 7 AM on a Saturday—he ignored it.
Tap.
Tap-tap.
TAP-TAP-TAP.
Groaning, Hank rolled over, pulling his pillow to his head. It was a strategy that had worked against the morning sun, his neighbor’s yapping dog, and once — on a particularly bad day when Hank was sick in bed with a head cold — a rogue car alarm from a neighbor who wasn’t even home to shut the damn thing off.
But this incessant noise? This tapping? It was different. It felt personal.
Five minutes later, Hank threw his pillow to the floor and dragged himself out of bed. He stumbled to the window and peered outside. There, perched on the corner of his house, was the culprit — a tiny checkered bird, happily pecking away at his siding like it was a full-time job with an accompanying 401K and health insurance benefits.
Hank knew a thing or two about birds. While an ornithologist may have classified Hank as an amateur birdwatcher, he felt he was a budding expert, especially when it came to woodpeckers. The area behind his home was wooded and every type of woodpecker you can imagine had swung by his property at some point over the years.
He knew more about the species than a teenage girl knew about Taylor Swift’s latest relationship woes. Just last year, a pileated woodpecker had done a number on his fence. Absolute mayhem in the span of an hour. But this wasn’t one of the big boys.
It was a downy woodpecker no bigger than a tufted titmouse. From head to tail it was six inches tall and weighed less than an ounce. Small and harmless looking. But Hank knew better. He knew a woodpecker was a woodpecker, no matter its wingspan, and he’d seen his neighbor Carol’s house. This pint-sized menace had enough destructive power in its loins to cause serious damage in no time flat.
From inside his home, he pointed his finger at the bird and said to it, “Not today, buddy. Not on my watch.”
The woodpecker paused for a moment, as if considering Hank’s plea, then resumed its work with twice the enthusiasm.
“That son of a…,” Hank said under his breath. He stood there, frozen in the helpless frustration that lay before him, of someone facing a problem so absurd that part of his brain refused to register it. Hank didn’t want to deal with this on a Saturday. His wife and kids were out of town, so of course a woodpecker will show up now just when he thinks he’ll get a little peace and quiet.
Surely a bird this small wasn’t capable of turning his house into Swiss cheese, but then he thought again of Carol’s house, which looked like it’d been lit up in a drive-by while she was on summer vacation last year. He’d tried to call her but she was “off the grid,” as she told him upon leaving.
Tap.
Tap-tap.
TAP-TAP… CRUNCH
A chunk of siding flaked off and tumbled to the ground.
“Alright, alright. That’s enough!” Hank said, slipping on his bedroom shoes. He stepped outside, walked around the corner, and approached the bird from below like he might approach a toddler throwing a tantrum — calm, but ready to intervene if things escalated.
The small woodpecker glanced at Hank from the high ground. It was like Obiwan and Anakin all over again and Hank was Anakin. The bird cocked its head to one side, sizing him up. Hank almost felt judged, like he wasn’t quite worthy of its time. He waved his arms wildly and shouted, “Shoo! Go on, get! Find a tree like a normal bird.”
The Downy gave him a long, unimpressed stare, as if he was saying, “Howdy neighbor. Just bought the place last night,” then resumed pecking, drilling a hole the size of a quarter within seconds. Hank clapped his hands together at his new tenant.
Nothing.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Hank walked back inside, scouring his closets for something, anything, that would scare the bird away. A broom? Too flimsy. A tennis racket? Too dramatic. He didn’t want to hurt the bird. It didn’t matter anyway. He hadn’t seen his tennis racket in years regardless of where it was stored.
Hank walked back outside and unlocked his small workshop. His eyes settled on a small, decorative owl his wife had purchased last spring. It was supposed to keep pests out of the garden. It worked on the squirrels for about a day before they started plucking tomatoes from the vine. Hank didn’t even know squirrels ate tomatoes until then.
Would the plastic owl have an effect on his new tenant? The owl was a predator, after all. Lifeless, sure. But the eyes looked real enough. Only one way to find out.
Hank placed the plastic owl on the fence post, positioning it to face the woodpecker like a silent sentry. For a moment, Hank thought he’d solved his problem. The bird stopped, tilted its head, and considered the owl.
But consider was all it did. The downy flew from the side of his house to a nearby tree limb and let out a sharp chirp. Perched on the limb, the tiny woodpecker inspected the owl from a different angle. A real owl would’ve turned its head in the creepy way owls do — and this owl did none of the sort.
“Worthless hunk of plastic,” Hank said as the downy flew back to the siding.
The next few days were a blur of failed attempts to drive the woodpecker away. Hank combed through the Reddit message boards. Reddit would have the answer, Hank thought. Reddit always had the answer. Hank tried every suggestion with more than a dozen upvotes: hanging shiny CDs from the gutters, spraying the area with vinegar, even playing loud music near the hole in the siding. He wasn’t sure if woodpeckers had strong musical preferences, but Hank figured anyone would be put off by his 90’s grunge playlist on repeat.
Unfortunately, the woodpecker seemed to enjoy Nirvana and Mudhoney, and had a special affinity for Sonic Youth.
By Thursday, Hank was close to his breaking point. The hole had grown from the size of a quarter to something closer to a softball. The downy had made its way past the siding and was now into the insulation. Pink tufts were scattered on the ground below. He swore he could even hear the checkered menace laughing at him between pecks like Stripe from the movie Gremlins.
He stood in the yard, hands on his hips, glaring up at the feathery vandal. “What do you want from me? My house? My sanity? Both?”
A voice interrupted his one-sided argument.
“Hey, Hank, who you talking to?”
It was his neighbor, Carol, standing on her porch in her gardening gloves, a trowel in one hand and an eyebrow raised. Carol was in her early sixties, always busy with a landscaping project or another, and never one to shy away from giving unsolicited advice.
Hank sighed. “It’s this woodpecker. You wouldn’t think a bird that small could be so destructive. The thing’s practically living in my siding.”
Carol squinted at the bird, which was hammering away without a care in the world as its gathered audience stood below.
“A woodpecker, huh? You remember the one I had last year? Pecked a hole straight into the attic. Had to call a wildlife guy to come deal with it.”
“A wildlife guy?” Hank asked, curious. “Like a professional?”
She shrugged. “Sort of. Well, more like my cousin Rick. He’s good with animals. Catches raccoons, squirrels, all that.”
“Squirrels?” Hank asked. “Who catches squirrels?”
“Rick does,” Carol said. “My brother in-law had one in his basement. Stored its cache of acorns next to his furnace. Tried to get it himself. Big mistake. You ever seen a squirrel’s teeth?”
Hank wasn’t sure how he felt about bringing in a wildlife guy just yet but the damage to his siding was multiplying by the minute. He wasn’t in a position to be picky and if this guy could catch a squirrel, surely he could scare away the tiniest woodpecker of its own species.
“Think you could get Rick over here?” Hank asked.
“Sure thing,” Carol said. “I’ll call him now. He’s a smidge odd just so you know. Good guy though.”
By Friday, Hank found himself pacing the yard, waiting for Carol’s cousin Rick to arrive. He wasn’t sure what to expect: a grizzled trapper in camouflage, maybe, or some sort of wildlife guru with a long ponytail and a deep respect for nature. What he got was, well, somewhere in between.
Rick rolled up in an old, rusted truck with “Rick’s Critter Control” hand-painted on the side. He hopped out, removed his cap which revealed a rat’s nest of disheveled hair upon his head, and introduced himself to Hank.
“So,” Rick said, chewing on a toothpick. “Heard you’ve got yourself a woodpecker.”
Hank nodded, feeling a tad sheepish. “Yeah. It’s been pecking a hole in my siding for the past week. It started minor enough. A few small holes here and there. Now I’ve got about three softball sized ones into the siding. They’re deep, too, about a foot into the insulation.”
Rick squinted up at the bird, which was still hammering away, oblivious to the new arrival. “Oh, this’ll be easy.”
Hank had his doubts. “You sure?”
“Oh yeah,” Rick said, cracking his knuckles like he was about to go toe-to-toe with the bird. “Woodpeckers ain’t too bright. You just gotta outsmart ’em.”
Hank wasn’t entirely convinced, but at this point, he was willing to let Rick give it a shot.
Rick’s plan, as it turned out, was a mixture of ingenuity and confusion — more the latter than the former.
First, he pulled a set of wind chimes from his truck. “Birds hate wind chimes,” he explained. “They can’t stand the noise.”
As Rick began to ascend his aluminum ladder, the woodpecker flew off. He hung the chimes on a rod he had installed next to one of the many holes the woodpecker had left behind.
“See,” Rick said. “Working already. Works every time.”
No sooner than Rick dropped the ladder did the checkered menace return. The chimes clanged together to the beat of the downy’s drilling.
Rick scratched his head. “Alright, no problem. No problem at all. Got more tricks up my sleeve.”
The next ‘trick’ involved a rubber snake, which Rick coiled near the woodpecker’s perch inside his latest hole. “This’ll scare him off for sure,” he said, stepping back proudly.
The woodpecker gave the snake a once-over, pecked at it a few times—just to make sure it wasn’t a fine delicacy for his taking—then returned to its main course: Hank’s siding.
Hank sighed. “Rick, I think you may be underestimating this bird.”
Rick frowned, clearly affronted by the bird’s refusal to cooperate. He walked to his truck and opened the toolbox. “You’ve left me no choice, bird.”
What came next could only be described as a tactical failure. “Last ditch effort” could be another phrase for it. “Desperate attempt,” “futile undertaking,” “pointless.” I guess there are other ways of describing it.
Rick nailed a 12″ x 16″ oval mirror to Hank’s siding, claiming the woodpecker would be frightened by a rival woodpecker and mount an attack against its reflection. Realizing his foe won’t leave, Hank’s woodpecker would in turn leave on its own accord.
Not only did this not work, but it appeared to both Hank and Rick below the woodpecker was a vain fellow who couldn’t get enough of himself in the mirror.
Rick returned to his truck and grabbed a large Bluetooth speaker.
“I tried that,” Hank said. “It doesn’t work.”
“But did you try hawk sounds?” Rick asked.
“I did not,” Hank said.
“I didn’t want to have to go this route. I’m not much on terrifying an animal, but this one leaves me no choice.”
Hawk sounds blasted from the speaker which Rick rested on the top rung of his ladder. He stood below waiting for the intended effect to take effect. But it took no effect. The bird didn’t seem bothered in the slightest by the screaming calls of the red-tailed hawk, the Cooper’s hawk, or the sharp-shinned hawk.
“I bet a Bald Eagle will make it leave,” Rick said.
“I don’t know if they are familiar with Bald Eagles in these parts,” Hank said back.
“Then how about a Peregrine Falcon? Fastest animal on the planet. A dive-bombing terror in the sky.”
Just as the speaker let out the kak-kak-kak of the Peregrine, the speaker itself tumbled from the top rung twenty feet above and bopped Rick on the forehead.
By sunset, Rick was sitting on Hank’s porch, nursing a lump on his head with an ice pack. He looked the casting role of a defeated man. His shirt was saturated with sweat and he was all out of ideas. The woodpecker, meanwhile, was methodically pecking away at the house like nothing had transpired over the last eight hours.
“I’ve never met a bird that stubborn,” Rick said.
Hank looked at Rick holding the icepack to his head, then found himself oddly admiring the Downy’s persistence.
“Maybe it’s not stubborn,” Hank said. “Maybe it just likes it here.”
Rick raised an eyebrow. “You saying you want to adopt the thing?”
Hank shook his head. “No, but what if we stop trying to fight it? I mean, it’s not leaving. Maybe we work with it.”
Rick blinked at him, then slowly nodded. “Work with it, huh? You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Maybe,” Hank said, “if what you’re thinking involves a hammer and nails.”
“That’s where I draw the line,” Rick said, not putting two and two together. “I remove animals. I don’t end their…”
“No, no!” Hank interrupted. “I want to build it a house. Its own house.”
“You scared me there for a minute,” Rick said. “Thought you went Jack Nicholson in The Shining on me. A birdhouse I can do. I used to build houses before I got into critter control. Human houses, of course.”
“Come back tomorrow?” Hank asked.
“First thing in the AM,” Rick said.
The next morning, Rick returned with an array of birdhouses he’d spent all night constructing. For as much as Hank questioned Rick’s all there togetherness upstairs, he had to admit, Rick’s carpentry was top notch.
“Didn’t sleep a wink,” Rick said. “I tried to find design plans on the Internet but couldn’t find nothing to my liking, so I drew up my own floor plans.”
For the area on Hank’s siding with two adjacent holes the size of a grown man’s fists, Rick had built a duplex birdhouse. First, he filled in the holes with destroyed insulation with spray foam then tacked aluminum sheathing over the gap. Up went the birdhouse.
On each side of the duplex birdhouse was a suet feeder basket.
“I’d keep the suet coming,” Rick said. “Because when it runs out, he may go after your siding again. Now for the creme de la creme of birdhouses, I present to you…”
“Now that’s something,” Hank said upon seeing the triple decker site before his eyes.
“This’ll go near your bedroom window. Here’s the thing though: it’s soundproof. In between the interior wall and the exterior board are sound proof panels. I had a few leftover from my old drumming days I could spare. You may still hear a little of the tapping. That’s to be expected. There’s only so much I can do, but it’ll be muffled more now.”
“Why three levels though?” Hank asked.
“The types of holes your little friend is creating aren’t for him alone. I think he’s got family coming.”
“Oh, brother,” Hank said.
As Rick descended the ladder, the world’s most determined woodpecker appeared inspecting its new home on Hank’s siding. A bizarre truce had been struck. The woodpecker, for its part, seemed pleased with the arrangement. He moved from the triple decker over to the duplex and started nibbling away at the suet feeder.
“Well,” Hank said. “Guess that solves it.”
“One last thing,” Rick said. “Your new neighbor needs a name. It seems only right.”
“Thurston,” Hank said.
“Thurston, huh?” Rick said. “Like Thurston Howell from Gilligan’s Island?”
“No, Sonic Youth. Bird loves that band. How much do I owe you?”
The next morning Hank woke to a light tapping below his bedroom window. It was a manageable tap. One he could live with. He walked to the window. His small, checkered friend appeared from his triple decker suite and let out a quick, sharp chirp upon seeing him. Hank gently tapped back at the window, then gave Thurston the Woodpecker a finger-wave.
“Who knew all you wanted was a place to call home?”
Later that afternoon, Hank’s wife and kids arrived back home after spending the past week with their grandparents. They’d missed all the excitement that had ensued while they were away.
“What’s with all the elaborate birdhouses?” Hank’s wife said as she dropped her bags into the foyer. His son and daughter both stopped to give him a quick hug before bolting upstairs to their bedrooms to check on their pets. His daughter had two gerbils, Pumpkin and Coconut, and his son a pet snake, a Ball Python named Beast.
“Long story,” Hank said. “We have a new neighbor.”
“Hey, dad,” his son called down from his room. “Have you seen Beast?”
“Don’t worry,” Hank said to his startled wife. “I know a guy.”
Thanks for reading. “The New Tenant” is a fictional short story based on my real-life experience with a downy woodpecker that did a number on my house last year.
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