Teresita Peralta tried to sleep. But there was that chirping. Again and again.
“They cried all night,” Peralta said of the baby sparrows that hatched in her bathroom’s exhaust fan.
She tried calling her building manager. She was told no help until after the weekend. Two days away? Maddening. Chirp-chirp-chirp!
Sanity in the balance, she called the fire department. And Lt. Lisa Wood came to the rescue. The call came in as “birds in a pipe.” This was a new one for Wood. She’s had calls for cats stuck in cars. A snake coiled in a television. And a monkey on the run. Never this. But Wood, one of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department’s three-member Venom Response Team — also known as Venom One — knows how to handle animals (all of them, despite the name of her unit). She also knows how to improvise and figure things out as she goes.