In our family's country house is a wood-burning stove. Opening it once after some months' absence, I found the corpses of two grey squirrels inside. We assumed that they had entered by the chimney, been unable to get out the same way, and starved to death. As we removed the dead squirrels we became aware that there was also a live one lurking in the flue. To save it from the same fate, we baited a Have-A-Heart trap on the hearth, opened the stove door, sealed off the immediate area with heavy plastic sheeting, and left the house.
The damn squirrel came out when all was quiet, ignored the yummy peanut butter in the trap, tore through the plastic, ran all around the house knocking breakable things off shelves, ate up all the toothpaste it could find, and generally made itself at home. When a human entered the house to check the trap (ha!), the thing exploded out of the kitchen garbage pail and raced back into the stove.
Later, when somebody with a little more sense tried annoying the animal with some smoke, it just ran away up the chimney and never came back. We never knew how the other two died.
A Salt Hygrometer
19 hours ago
8 comments:
They may have died the last time it had been used from having inhaled smoke. They possibly sat on the pipe because it was warm and just dropped in when they passed out. The reason I know a little about this is that one day when the living room filled with smoke we found an enormous owl blocking our wood-burning stove's flue -- an ex-owl -- it used to sit on the chimney pot to keep warm. The owl had previously made off with our parrot as his dinner on Christmas Eve. Our ex-parrot.
Sorry, I missed a few commas.
Nij has a couple of great chimney pictures here.
http://camelsnose.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/lake-critters/
Toothpaste, who knew.
The owl had previously made off with our parrot as his dinner on Christmas Eve. Our ex-parrot.
Sorry to hear it. How did the owl get to where the parrot was?
See my upcoming post for our own domestic large raptorial bird story.
It was dark; Chistmas Eve, in the snow. I was outside smoking a cigar my wife had bought me. The parrot, who had been sitting on my shoulder, was suddenly frightened by a broomstick lying beside the door and flew into a tree down the garden; whereupon the owl appeared from nowhere, grabbed her in its claws and flew off. The parrot tried to disconcert the owl by making crow noises (cawing), but to no avail. We spent the rest of Christmas looking for her, but we never found anything.
Since you didn't find any feathers, AJP, it's always possible it's not so much an ex-parrot as a born-free parrot. We have noisy green nuisance parrots that have moved into our neighborhood and every year try to build a huge nest in the power line transformers.
I can just picture AJP with a parrot on his shoulder, a bandana, and an eye-patch, mumbling "aye, matey, shiver me timbers".
I don't see it that way. I see a man and a bird quietly at peace with the world. The background music is "Silent Night" rather than "Fifteen Men". A perfect moment about to be shattered.
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