When we got home from work today, I plunked down on the sofa — which is currently situated right in front of our currently unusable fireplace — and I heard a strange scratching, rustling sound. It sounded like something was clawing at the metal mesh curtains in front of the fireplace. I jumped up, too freaked to look at first. I told myself that it was probably one of the cats… but then it occurred to me that those mesh curtains are *inside* the glass doors of the fireplace.

Luckily, my husband — and our cats — are much braver than I am when it comes to this sort of thing. They investigated and discovered that a bird had somehow gotten in there and was trapped. Poor thing! Kate has noticed that they like to perch on the chimney, where warm exhaust from the furnace must go… and I guess this little birdy leaned over the opening a bit too far.

After corralling the curious cats (who seemed to be quite familiar with our unexpected visitor — poor thing must’ve been in there all day), and peering into the fireplace with a flashlight for a while, Kate finally opened the fp doors and sort of tossed in a bath towel like casting a net. We looked back in and saw two scared birdy eyes still peeking out from the very back corner. As soon as we paused and leaned away from the opening for a second, the bird took off into the living room, fluttered around for a minute, and flew into the sunroom/craft room at the back of the house. Fortunately, this room has sliding doors that shut it from the rest of the house… and it has its own door to the outside… so, from there it was pretty easy to run around to the back, open the door, and set the bird free. Whew! Quite a bit of drama for a Tuesday!

Here’s a picture of the bird rescue crew assessing the situation:

I couldn’t get a clear picture of the bird himself. Wonder what kind it was? He was a bluish black color with a black pointy beak. About the size of a cardinal.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2004 at 11:54 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.