Wildlife Rescuers

Today started out almost normal, apparently too normal. First I learned I was trying to be swindled by (big surprise) the service station of my car dealership. Last week I was in there for something really small and warranty related, they asked if I wanted to go ahead and get my state safety inspection done as it was due for renewal, I thought "how convenient, kill two birds with one stone." Well they came back and told me that my front brake pads would not pass inspection and it would cost $175.00 parts and labor to put on new brake pads. I knew I could do it for less locally so I declined and they put this big pink "REJECTION" sticker on my windshield where my inspection sticker would go. I know it was really not that big a deal, but it never feels good to get something like that. So Zach took the van down to a place down the street where we know the guys, and they told him the brake pads were fine and nowhere near in need of replacement, and so they passed me and took off the "REJECTION" sticker and put the regular one on. That was a relief.
Then we were all sitting downstairs after breakfast and we heard a loud thud from the fireplace, it was a bird. It was flapping and freaking out clawing and getting stuck on the mesh screen. There are now bird droppings on the inside of the fireplace door, good times. So the bird was struggling terribly and we realized we had 3 choices: 1) we could just wait it out and hope that it either flies out or kicks the bucket quickly (neither of which were likely)
2) we could try and catch it as quickly as possible (difficult and messy)
3) we could toss a lit fire log in there and see what happens (yuck, shouldn't have even thought about that one!)
So we chose the most humane, practical and messy solution, Zach bravely got almost entirely inside the fireplace and extracted the very frightened little bird, it was a good thing he was wearing big gloves, and let it go outside. I guess it could have been worse. I do not really wish to have "really uneventful" days anymore, because they start out that way, but always end up going entirely in the opposite direction!