Bats in the Belfry? No, Birds in the Fireplace.

When we bought our house we inherited an Earth Stove, which is basically a self-contained fireplace insert. It has a front door with yellow glass panels and is kinda cool since you can have a fire and not worry about sparks flying out and burning the whole house down. The other thing that we inherited (and have been too inertia-bound to ever do anything about) was barn swallows nesting in the chimney. Everytime winter rolls around we tell each other that we "really need to get a chimney sweep to come out to clean everything out and then install a chimney cap" and every year it doesn't happen somehow and every spring through summer we get to hear multiple new crops of baby barn swallows cheep and scrabble around in there. The first few times I heard the scrabbling noise, I thought for sure that one of them had fallen down into the fireplace but TLS assured me that with the damper closed that was impossible. This continued to be the case until last night. (And it is still impossible with the damper closed, but just guess which position the damper lever was in when all this happened.)

TLS was at his indoor soccer game and wouldn't be home until almost midnight. (Why is it that all the crazy things happen when he isn't around? Don't answer. That was a rhetorical question, really.) I was sitting there catching up on all the shows recorded on the DVR when I heard some noises emanating from the fireplace that didn't sound quite right. I finally got up and looked through the tinted glass and saw a barn swallow staring back at me. The poor thing kept fluttering around in there and flinging itself against the glass. I suppose since the only source of light was coming through there. The cat was going bananas pawing at the front and I was completely stymied. I briefly considered getting a pillow case and trying to open the door and catch him in it, but because of the width of the door, I figured it was much more likely that he'd escape into the house and then I'd really have a problem on my hands, since our ceilings are ten feet and there's no way to shut the living room off from much of the rest of the house. My plan of attack was turn off all the living room lights, go into the bedroom and wait for the cavalry to arrive.

I managed to be awake when TLS got home and told him about the errant bird. He said there wasn't much use at this point in doing anything about it in the dead of night and that it would wait until morning. Morning broke with the bird still stuck in there. (Couldn't have been easy with him magically flying back up the chimney, oh no.) TLS opened the door and tried to grab him with a towel, but birdie decided to try an escape but only managed to fly into the front window. He stunned himself momentarily, but TLS was able to keep the cat from pouncing on it, picked him up, took him outside and released him. Everyone will be happy to know that said bird flew away under his own power and is hopefully living it up flying around the neighborhood. Now, where's the number for that chimney sweep?