Well, in the fine tradition of Dopers dealing with animals unfortunate to cross their paths, I just extricated a dead bird from the flue.
Came home from work, and was changing out of shirt/tie/etc into more around-the-house clothes and I felt a draft coming from the fireplace. (Yes, the fireplace is in my bedroom. Due to a slight deficit of bedrooms in the house, what most other people would use as a den/family room is serving as my bedroom.) So, I decided that since I’m feeling a draft I should just verify that the flue was closed. Turns out it was, as I confirmed by opening it. That’s when I noticed a feather poking through. Upon closer inspection, I realized that said feather was still attached to its bird and that said bird was an ex-bird. (Though not an ex-parrot.)
I closed the hearth doors and wandered upstairs into the kitchen. “Hey dad,” said I, “I just found a dead bird in the flue. We’re going to have to get rid of it.” We just kind of looked at each other and agreed, “After dinner.”
So, after dinner I stroll over to my brother’s room. “You wanna give me a hand with something?” “What?” “Getting a dead bird out of the flue.” “Huh? Sure.”
So, I grabbed a few trash bags from the kitchen, some plastic wrap, and headed to the hearth. The plastic wrap was applied to the ends of the fireplace tongs so that afterward I could remove the plastic and toss it in the trash and not have to deal with cleaning bird contamination from the tongs. My brother and I each put on some rubber gloves(Keep a box in your house. They come in handy), and he held the bag while I worked the tongs. The event sounded like this:
(I’m sure I omitting some of the conversation)
“Look, it’s right there.”
“Ew. How long do you think it’s been there?”
“I don’t feel like thinking about it.”
“It’s really caught in there.” (When I opened the flue, it got pinned between the ‘door’ of the flue and the chimney wall)
“Yeah. I suspect it died and then fell in.”
“You sure?”
“Well, I didn’t hear it complaining that it was there and dying!”
“What if it happened in the middle of the day?”
“I don’t think it would have died that quickly. And someone would have heard it.”
“You want me to hold that flashlight for you?”
“Sure. Thanks. Umm…you wanna move out of the way of the tongs, please? Hey! Don’t hold the flashlight so close to the bird. Will you please keep my flashlight away from the dead bird? Damn (as the plastic wrap falls off the tongs)”
“Hang on a minute Brother goes to the garage and gets an old, beat up winter glove that’s about to be thrown out anyway. Let me see if I can get it.”
“I almost have it with the tongs. Hang on.”
bird falls into bags
“Was it missing its head?”
“Well, it had a head, because I know I saw it up there. Maybe it got separated. Let me look up there.”
brother picks up bird in heavily gloved hand and we note that the head is still, in fact, attached
“Will you leave the bird alone, please? Hey! I don’t wan’t that bird crossing the threshold of the fireplace until it is sealed in the bags.”
At which point, he left the bird in the bag. I closed up the bags, went outside to our trash cans, placed the bags in,peeled off the rubber gloves, dropped them in the pail, closed it, and went back in.
“Okay! Bird’s out!”
Okay. Not as funny as the mouse hunting told to us by Missy2U (if memory serves) and ChiefScott’s suicidal squirrel, but I felt like sharing.
Tor