Adam@Home by Rob Harrell for January 18, 2015

Chimney Swifts, however, are real and go rustle, etc.

Worked with the Audubon Society several years ago – always got calls about chimney swifts and the incessant cheeping and how to get rid of them. Solution: block off the chimney before breeding season. Always pointed out the plus side: no mosquitos in the area? Not what they wanted to hear, but legally, they are protected during breeding season. Once they fledge (and keep the flue shut so the babies do not end up in the house, flying about), then the chimney can be cleaned out. Burned babies and nest fires are nasty. Think ahead. And yes, I have fireplace chimneys with blocking grates.

Sparrows too  

You see, it all began upon a midnight dreary (or rather, since this is me we are talking about, around nine o’clock last night; though as it happened I was actually pondering over a curious volume of forgotten lore—-at least I think Maureen Halsall’s edition of the Old English Rune Poem qualifies). Anyway suddenly and from behind me there came a loud and uncertain rustling that filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before, or at least not felt since that time the mouse ran across my cubical floor at work, and that was during the day!

Ah!

It stopped!

The Scene IAnd at first I thought it had merely been an outside noise that had fooled me; a ventriloquist perhaps scraping with a stick along my outside wall as he passed and nothing more.

And then: Oh! horror!

Again it came!!

And this time I was facing the source and got the full stereo effect.

And to my horror I realised it was coming from…

From…

Now seems a good time to break the narrative flow to tell you somewhat of the layout of the room. As you might guess I have many a quaint and curious volume of both forgotten and even quite well remembered lore, and most of them live in a set of bookcases; the first of these running along that outside wall and next to the window, then two, back to back coming out into the room, and a final two running again along the wall, making in all a sort of ‘T’. In order to avoid the uprights of any of the bookcases getting in the way of retrieving books from the inside corners, this means that there had to be a gap—a sort of well behind the meeting of the cases about ten inches by twenty, an unavoidable void that I ignore year by year and that is filled year by year with nothing but dust and the odd, usually dead, insect.

And to my horror I realised the rustling, fluttering noises were coming from the void!

I, of course did what any self-respecting Englishman of my age and class would do—-I sort of panicked and then immediately over-compensated and tried to scrabble up the bookcases so see just what sort of vile monster I was facing, without first considering the vile materials now used in construction so that the second shelf I trod on collapsed, spilling its contents and me on the floor. It was a shelf of twentieth century poets—-Hughes, Auden, McNeice, Eliot, Larkin and the like, and we all know how well they can look after themselves so all in all it could have been worse.And so I rethought and regrouped, and got a stool and a torch and cleared some space and gazed down into the void.There gazing back at me and intermittently and ineffectually fluttering was—-a small sparrow. And since sparrows are not VTO aircraft (nor VTO birds for that matter) it couldn’t fly out.

How, I asked (and still ask) myself, how in the name of all that’s feathery could a sparrow get into my apartment and behind my bookcases?Was it the dreaded Wall Burrowing Sparrow or was it perhaps the magics of the fabled Transmigrational Sparrow that were involved—-pentagrams and birds in black and sigil-studded cloaks dabbling in Dark Arts of the sort that are best left undabbled in.

I immediately called Ron-the-Landlord for help, but his only suggestion, of using a shopvac on the thing, I immediately rejected on the grounds of “Yeuuuch!”, and went to bed, hoping the bird would do the same.

Then, the very next morning, I called the DFW Area Wildlife Hotline. And a delightful young lady called Lucy listened to my woes (largely, I suspect, because she thought they were really the bird’s woes) and then suggested that the bird might be able to climb out if I let down a rope of towels or sheets knotted together, but since the thing was not yet doing the 7 to 10 in Attica that it so richly deserved, I followed her other suggestion and got a small fishing net and went bird fishing. And it worked! I opened the door and attached the net’s pole to a dowel as an extension and caught it and dragged it up to the top of the bookcases and as soon as it saw daylight it was off.   I later saw the damn thing on the tree outside my apartment, happily progressing from stalking to criminal damage, on the roof of my car.I’m off now to the car wash so…

Sorry that WAS long

So, I guess the upshot of all this is… wait for it!… always get your flue shut! Thank you! Thank you! :-)

richardelguru – Do we call you Edgar now? So thankful you didn’t say that bird said “nevermore”. That was a great story. i thoroughly enjoyed it! Happy car washing.

Thank you Perkycat, though I think I’d rather prefer Allen to Edgar. :-)

@richardelguru……………I always knew there were “Dreaded Wall Burrowing Sparrows”!

LOVED your story! One of our son’s tells lllloooooong stories, but they are always worth it!

Missionaries and poll takers, very hard to get rid of.

Better than a Wesley Snipe getting stuck in your chimney.

We occasionally had uninvited visitors in our fireplace via the flue! Usually it was a bird or two; but, one time it was a squirrel and he/she was not at all happy about the incarceration behind the glass doors of the enclosure!.When I shined a flashlight into the firebox, it jumped to the doors standing on its hind legs with its forelegs against the glass and gave me a very nasty stare!.The problem finally went away when the tree with branches overhanging the roof was removed years ago…

Nicely done, Rob. And the usual suspects—our commenters—have done an equally nice job of running with this.