The Owl in the Chimney

     The week started with a trip to Denver to pick up the chairs we bought the week before.  We drove in rain most of the way home.  Just west of Limon she really let her hair down.  We hit a spot of deep water on I-70 going  about 60 that readjusted the pickup’s exhaust system.

     In Limon, water was bumper deep in several spots, but as we progressed north, the rain lessened and lessened.  When we got to the farm, we pulled into the garage, unloaded the chairs and dried them off (they were covered with a tarp, but we went through some serious rain). 

     Having secured our valuable new property, I trudged out to the rain gauge.   .2” 

   Well, musn’t complain.  Something is better than nothing.  More on that, later.

       Tuesday seemed a great time to take on a project I have postponed for a dozen years.  This episode in life took place sometime in the 90’s.  Granny lived in the town house during the winter and the farm house in the summer. 

    It was an Easter weekend.  We pulled into the farm house on Friday.  We noticed a “scritching” in the chimney in the kitchen.  I said “dang (maybe) mouse” and set some traps.

    By Sunday morning, the scritching had stopped in the kitchen, but no mouse in any trap.  A trip to the basement revealed the sound was now in the basement chimney.  Closer inspection revealed the sound coming from the stove pipe to the old kitchen range.

    Somehow, further investigation got postponed until Easter afternoon. Astrid Korsvold and Mom were Easter dinner guests.  Following cleanup, the scritching had risen to the top of the priority list.

    Now, it was in the stove, no longer the pipe.  I pulled the stove away from the chimney far enough to remove the pipe, and there staring out at us, two huge owl eyes.  A hand in meant a hand pecked or taloned.

     “Let it die.  We’ll get it out then,” I said.

    “No,” wailed the Wife indignantly.  Off she went to get her dishwashing gloves.  Poor choice.  “Rubber” gloves aren’t talon proof.  I got her the welding gauntlets.

    They worked much better.  Now she could get a good hold on the owl.  But when she pulled to extract him, he spread his wings and couldn’t be budged.  Bear in mind this is all taking place in an oval stove pipe opening in the back of the old kitchen range, an opening designed to accommodate a six-inch stove pipe.

     Once upon a time when we were younger and still had the energy, we went on a scavenger hunt.  It was boys versus girls.  One of the items was a live bird.  So one of the ladies in the Wife’s group led them to a chicken house she knew of.  The lady, a farm girl, grabbed a flapping squawking chicken from her night roost and promptly tucked the hen’s head under her arm pit.  The squawking and flapping ceased instantly and the bird relaxed and went limp.

       “Cover their heads,” the lady explained.

     And now the Wife remembered this.  One gloved hand over the huge eyes, and this time the wings didn’t spread as she maneuvered and managed to extricate the bird from the stove.  That was really quite a feat, almost as remarkable as how the bird got into the chimney in the first place.

      Up the stairs came the knight-lady in shining armor having rescued her owl in distress.  Granny and Astrid oohed and awed.  Someone had the presence of mind to suggest a picture, but alas!  Not a working camera in the house. (1990’s, remember?  No cell phones, no digital cameras.  Just film ones, and we didn’t have a camera with film in it.)

     Astrid lived to be over 100 hundred years old.   The last time I talked to her, a year or so before she died, she brought up the owl story.  She never forgot that.

      The Wife kept the owl’s wings pinioned as we searched futilely for a camera.  The owl hardly struggled, head uncovered and all. 

      Finally, having failed to record a visual image of the remarkable event, we spectators formed a reception committee outside near the back steps, like wedding guests waiting around the church steps to shower the newly-wed bride and groom with rice.  (Millet?  Rice kills birds?  The Chinese invented kites to keep the birds out of the rice paddies.  If rice killed birds, kites wouldn’t have got invented.  How do such legends get started, and what fools are we to believe them?)

      Out came the Wife, bird in two hands, to stand briefly on the back stoop.  With a motion not unlike Wilt Chamberlain shooting a two-handed free throw, she released and launched Mr. Owl to the East.  We all sucked in our breath as Mr. Owl spread his six-foot wing span over our heads and flew off to take a second chance at life. 

      How did a bird with that wing span get into that chimney and then a six-inch stove pipe?

      Since that time, I have pulled two other owls out of that basement stove, one dead, one alive.  Let us expend an ounce of prevention.     

     The tin roof presents a problem.  With shingles, I could hang on to the dormer roof and get up and down.  Not so easy on a metal roof.

   The Rube Goldberg device I used to stand on while screwing the tin to the roof, my brother’s invention, had to be slightly modified for this job.  I barely could get it up on the roof by myself even with modifications.  Resolved: the next time I find it necessary to climb this thirty-sixer, I will put down some angle irons that will be permanent, like on grain bin roofs.

    The chimney really should be capped as well as screened, so:

    What I thought would take maybe four or five hours, took all day Tuesday and a lot of Wednesday.  Anyway, no more owls need apply, maybe.