Swallow sets up boot camp while hurler is away

BY HANGING up his boots, a Limerick hurler opened a home for an expectant mother.

Rory O’Gorman played with Dromin Athlacca before he recently left for a year in Australia.

Before doing so, Rory, 23, hung his boots in an outside shed at the family home in Athlacca.

His mother Margaret, an AIB official, decided to give the boots a polish in the expectation Rory might resume hurling when he gets back.

Margaret said: “When I went to take them down from the hook they were hanging from, I saw a bird had made a beautiful nest in one of the boots. And there was one egg in the nest. It is a swallow’s egg. The poor little swallow went to great trouble to build the nest with mud and then made it comfortable with a feathered interior.”

Margaret suspects the swallow got locked out of the shed and took off to warmer climes before she could hatch her egg.

“I have put the boots back up and left the nest as we found it. Hopefully, the swallow will come back next summer. If she does, Rory will have to get himself a new pair of boots.”