A metro Atlanta couple was greeted with an odd engagement present a week after their proposal: a nearly 3 foot vulture showed up inside their home.
Door camera footage shared with USA TODAY caught Vernalisa Rouguex’s disbelief when her fiancé, Jake Totri, said the bird made its way inside through their dog door on Saturday afternoon. When she realized how it entered she immediately said “we’re never opening that doggy door again.”
Rouguex said they left home for 15 minutes to grab food and had no idea a vulture could enter. She was glad her twin 7-year-old daughters were at their father’s house and weren’t exposed to any germs that the bird carried.
“One of their stuffed bears was laying right by the doggy door. So what I learned is that vultures can not smell but they have keen eyesight. So it must have seen the bear and thought it was a dead animal and just hopped in,” Rouguex told USA TODAY Monday.
Rouguex used an umbrella to scare the bird outside the garage. She said she’s always heard that you’re supposed to scare an aggressive animal by appearing larger than it.
“The only thing that could make me appear bigger was the umbrella,” Rouguex said. “And it would put distance between me and the vulture. So I just grabbed my umbrella and went in fighting this thing.”
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The bird flew around the house and knocked over plants and a lamp, Rouguex said. The video also showed a knocking sound which Rouguex clarified was the bird running into the window trying to escape as she repeatedly opened and closed the umbrella to scare it.
The video also shows the couple calling for their dog, Georgia, to come outside shortly after they discover the bird. Rouguex said she thinks the dog was asleep during the whole incident, until the couple came home.
Since the incident, Rouguex said she has ordered a replacement door with no exclusive entrance for dogs or birds.
And she’s spent a lot of time cleaning.
“For the past few days have just been sanitizing the (expletive) out of this house,” Rouguex said. “I have no idea what kind of diseases these things carry.”
