birdbrain

Not about house pets, but really too odd to pass up.

From a book of letters to the Spectator: A doctor leaves behind a human skull.  Robins move in, and Life and Death are summarily mused upon.
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In a disused stable behind my house there hangs an inverted human skull (left by a brother, now a doctor in India). On the orbit, and resting against the wall, about five feet from the ground, a robin has built her nest. There were six eggs, two of which are now hatched, and the birds have not deserted their home, notwithstanding the fairly constant observations of the family, which includes three boys, aged respectively two, four, and six years. The birds built although the gardener was constantly going to and from the stable, where the garden tools are kept.

X.
May 16, 1908.
Note.—Mr. W. H. Hudson has wished that when he is dead an adder will make a hibernaculum of his skull. I should prefer the robins. O Death, where is thy victory, when thou ministerest thus to the uses and victory of life?

-- From Dogs, birds & others : natural history letters from "The Spectator." / chosen, with an introduction and notes, by H. J. Massingham, with a preface by John St. Lee Strachey. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1921). 71.