For The Birds

I just read a post over at Treading Water that reminded me of an adventure I had once oh, about a dozen years ago.

We lived in a tri-level house which had a good sized basement, and in this basement was a wood-burning stove - about twice the size of a "Ben Franklin" potbelly.
Now during the winter, part of my daily routine was to come home from work and light a fire in the stove. The basement is where we spent most of our at-home time, as that's where the family room was. By the time dinner was over with and settling in time rolled around, it would be nice and toasty down there and there is where we would remain pretty much until bed time.

One day after work, I came home and was going about my rourine of bringing in a couple armloads of wood, and getting ready to light the fire. I opened the front door of the stove, and in a great poof of soot, a squeal like the devil himself had stepped on a rusty nail, and wings flapping hard enough to propel a creature somewhere between warp 6 and warp 7, out came what I could have sworn to be a banshee. In reality though, it was a bird no larger than a bat.

Evidently this varmint had flown (or fallen) down the chimney and spent a good portion of the day in the ashy, sooty firebox. The inside of which was quite evenly and thickly coated, from the bird flapping around in there trying to escape. Which upon my arrival, had facilitated quite well.

So now, I have this panic stricken bird flying around the house, not wanting anything to do with me. I'm trying to figure out a way to rid our humble abode of the evil demon, when I decide the only thing I can hope for is to corral it with my waving arms and drive it upstairs where I can chase it out a door.

Finally, after going around in circles in the basement a few times, I am finally able herd this bird up the stairs. Well, I had a good idea, but the bird just wouldn't cooperate. Now the bird is flying around the middle story of the tri-level and so am I - with my arms outstretched trying to chase it.

The next thing I know, the bird has spotted its escape path, which is a sliding glass door going to the patio. Of course, I didn't have the door open yet, but the bird didn't seem to care. I'm sure he had thoughts of freedom, dinner at home in the nest with the wife and chicks, but no. The glass had other ideas.

The reverberation from the glass seemed to go on for like, 10 seconds, but I know it wasn't near that long. The perfectly detailed splattering of soot on the glass was impressive though. You could see the shape of the feathers, its eyeball, the beak, even it's tiny little legs were perfectly slik screened onto the glass.
Of course, the bird was laying on the floor, knocked out cold. After picking it up to look it over, it fit nicely in the palm of my hand. I was deciding whether to toss it into the garbage in the house or the one outside, when next thing I knew, it started coming around!

First, one eye. Then the other. Then it raised its head. The rest came a little slower though. I'm sure it was waiting for the stars to clear and 200 decibel drumming to stop before it tried to go anywhere. So, I stepped outside so if it decided to make a break for it, it wouldn't try to pass through the invisible shield again.

It's totally amazing that thing came around at all, but I'm guessing that in about two minutes time, it had fully recouperated - at least on the outside - and had flown off from my hand while I was standing out there on the patio.

So I left the print on the glass for Mrs. Curmudgeon to see when she got home, and went about my business of lighting the evening fire. But believe this: I opened that stove door ever so slowly every single time after that.