Subject: Weekend Update: Addendum: The Birds
Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 10:18:28 -0400

During our yard clean-up last Saturday, I pruned the hydrangeas
and snipped the wood into smaller sticks.  I had Emily place
these in the fireplace to be disposed of when the temperature
got cooler as it did yesterday afternoon during a cool rain.

At around 4PM yesterday, I got a phone call.  Andrew was on
the phone wanting to know what to do because the barn was=20
filling up with fire smoke.  I suggested that they put out
the fire!  Yes, but how?

"Baking soda?" "We don't have enough of that."  "We have a
fire extinguisher, don't we?" "Yes, but if we use that we'll
have to buy another one."  ("This is not a time for parsimony,"
I thought to myself.  In fact, it didn't make sense that I'd
be called at work to be asked  advice on how to put out a fire
that was still spewing smoke into the barn!)  "You can smother
the fire with dirt," I offered, thinking of campfires.  I
suspected that they wanted the create the least amount of=20
mess since the fire was contained in the woodstove. "Okay."=20
he said and put down the phone.  Some minutes later, Andrew
got back on the phone to give me the story.

Andrew described smoke coming from the top of the smoke stack
inside the barn.  When they first detected the smoke, Joy
immediately started to get the wedding dresses out of the loft
and into the living room at the other end of the house.  The
wedding dress was in a plastic bag, but the others were not,
so she had to get them away from the smoke.  From Andrew's
description, I surmised that the chimney was blocked, causing
the smoke to back up into the house.  When I got home, my
suspicions were confirmed; sticks were sticking out of the
top of the stack; a bird had built a nest.  They dumped a few
inches of soil into the top of the stove.  The fire was still
smoldering when I got home.

Joy had several fans operating, but it is going to take a few
days for the smoke to dissipate.  She is washing down the
furniture and will steam clean the carpet, which she said needed
it anyway.  I know this sounds cruel but I hope we gassed that
bird in its nest.  I'll have to deal with the smoke stack sometime
before next fall.  :-(

To add insult to injury, this morning, a pair of starlings
decided that our dryer vent was an excellent place to set
up house.  Shades of Alfred Hitchcock!  Luckily, we caught
this nest-building early and chased them out by turning on
the dryer. I then stapled some netting over the outside of
the dryer vent this morning. This was not the first time we
had starling problems with the dryer vent, but it has been
several years.

Mark