I’m selling shit on eBay. You KNOW you totally needed a Chippendale Tea Box from the late 1700s.
Last week when Fred was in Smallville with me, we were sitting on the couch playing Scrabble (you envy our exciting life, DO NOT DENY IT)(also, apparently Fred wins Scrabble when we play, but only because I LET him. Shhh, don’t tell him!) and it was windy and blustery out, and we kept hearing the sounds of a bird cheeping.
Mister Boogers disapproves of Scrabble.
“Harbl” was mine, “Hef” was Fred’s. Nicknames and internet lingo are A-OK by our rules. We’re thinking of playing a game with the rule “It’s not a word, but it totally sounds like it should be!” next time.
“I think there’s a bird in the chimney,” Fred said, and went over to peer up the chimney.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous*,” I said. “There’s not a bird in the chimney. The roof guy put a cap on the chimney!”
Fred peered up the chimney some more, and I p’shawed again and told him to get back on the couch to finish the game of Scrabble.
He left Crooked Acres around 8, and the weather kept getting windier, and some time around 11, as I was watching some show or another on iTunes, I became aware that the chirping, squawking bird noises from the chimney were getting more insistent. I ignored the sounds for a while and then huffed with annoyance, put down the laptop and went to get a flashlight.
I noted, right before I laid down on my back in the fireplace with my face under the opening to the chimney, that there seemed to be quite a lot of bird poop on the floor of the fireplace. I peered up the chimney, flashing the flashlight around the chimney, and then suddenly, toward the top of the chimney, something flapped wildly and squawked, and I screamed and levitated across the room, landing in the opposite corner, surrounded by freaked-out cats.
Once I’d calmed down a bit, I grabbed my cell phone and called Fred, to report that there was something flapping around in the chimney, and what should I do?
Fred very much appreciated being awakened (NOT) and after a minute, I came up with my own solution, apologized for waking him up, and went upstairs, where I grabbed a set of sheets from out of the closet in his bedroom, which I brought downstairs and stuffed in the hole leading to the chimney.
Assured that no birds would come flying down the chimney and peck my eyes out while I was sleeping, I went to bed.
Investigator Toms searches for the bird.
The next morning, I pulled the sheets out and looked to see if the bird was still up there. It was, and it squawked and flapped when the light from the flashlight hit it, and again I screamed and levitated across the room, followed by an amazing number of cats.
It’s just disconcerting to have something with a sharp little beak squawking and flapping about not far from your face.
I called Fred. “I think that bird’s stuck in the chimney,” I said.
“Let me call the chimney guys and see if they can come out and let it out,” he said.
Ten minutes later, he called back. “They said they’ll be out ‘sometime,’” he reported.
“That’s what they said? ‘Sometime’?” I said.
“Yes, the lady at the office said she’d call the guy and he’d be out sometime.”
“Well, that’s HELPFUL,” I said, and because it was a day I needed to go to Madison and do some laundry, I did that, figuring that if they needed me at the house, it’d only take me 20 minutes to get there.
That evening, I reported to Fred that the bird was still there.
Next morning, same thing.
Fred called the chimney guys, and discovered that in the past day the phone number had been disconnected, with no forwarding number.
“They went out of business to avoid you!” I teased Fred.
A while later he called me back to tell me that he’d called the guys who’d trimmed our trees a few months ago, and they said that they’d send someone out to free the bird.
I puttered around the house for a while longer, then decided to double-check and be sure the bird was still up there.
And it was gone. Figures, doesn’t it?
At least I realized it in time to get Fred to cancel the guy who was coming out.
I’m still a little curious to know how the bird got through the cap and into the chimney, let alone back out.
*You can already see where this is going, can’t you?
