It's safe to say that I will never win gold for my housekeeping. Heck, I wouldn't even be on the lowest steps of the podium. For that matter, even if the podium held as may steps as the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán, I would still be a no show! But don't get me wrong. I'm not boasting about a love of filth. I'm just saying that the art of housekeeping is not my forte. There is one bit of housekeeping I'm forced to do each year and even that I find quite distasteful. Of course I'm talking about cleaning out birdhouses.

You may wonder why I'm cleaning out birdhouses at this time of year. Usually during January, fields are knee to thigh deep in snow, winds are howling, and outside air temperature is not conducive to shows of manual dexterity with small tools. However, this particular January seems unseasonably warm, and the disappearance of what little snow we had caused something in me to stir, so I got in a cleaning mood. I set my sights on 101 Mile Marsh, the closest and biggest congregation of my birdhouses, and began to prepare.

In years gone by, I've often tripped up by not remembering all the types of tool needed to properly do the job. This time I brought something for every bird box problem imaginable. My tool kit included a range of flat-head screwdrivers, Robertson screwdrivers, and Philips screwdrivers. I had wire cutters, and different kinds of wire to cut. I had barbecue tongs, a three-tined garden trowel, dust masks, a hammer, pliers and the kitchen sink. In order to trundle my huge tool collection across the barren birdhouse wastelands; I would need the workhorse of all my conveyances - the yellow plastic toboggan. With all this, and more, stowed in the car, I declared myself ready to go.

I must interrupt my story here to bring you an important and timely shopping tip.If you like to garden, or drag quantities of tools across snow, or in this particular case, drag tools across a lot of open grass and a little snow, now is the time to buy end-of-season plastic sleds. Yes, the stores are falling all over themselves to get rid of sleds this very month! Go out and get one now because once you try the sled method of moving things around the garden, the lawn, or the pasture you will be convinced that this method beats wagons, wheelbarrows, or other types of conveyance. Enough said - I can tell that you are convinced - back to the story.

I reached 101 Mile Marsh and walked towards the first bird box, dragging my sled. The wind was from the south so I decided to clean the first box without a dust mask... suffice it to say that when I reached the second bird box, I wore the dust mask and did not remove it afterwards until the whole job was completed.

In essence, cleaning bird boxes is much like cleaning little toilets of the detritus of dried and compacted bird droppings. Sometimes the boxes also contained dried and desiccated baby birds - I told you I didn't like cleaning birdhouses! To try to break the tedium of being surrounded by whirling filth, and scraping at encrusted droppings, I put the binoculars to my eyes from time-to-time, and scanned the fence line for birds. But, as this is January in the Cariboo, a Raven passing overhead was the only suggestion that birds still inhabited this planet.

I was glad to find the right tool nearby for each bird box problem I encountered. Well, almost. There were only two boxes I couldn't clean or repair. One box fell from the fence and was iced into the ground. The second box had small screws holding the lid on and I had no small Robertson-head screwdriver. All in all, my house cleaning proceeded nicely and I retired from the field well satisfied.