Sooty flight to freedom

At first, I thought the startling noise I heard was a mouse ...  maybe in the wall?  Scratching around.  So, I tried to locate it, but every time I'd move around the house to find the spot, the noise would stop.  I could just see, in my imagination, a little mouse just creating a mess, wherever he was.  And the scratching and tinging (near a sauce pan??  in the cupboard??) continued! 

Finally, I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and realized that something was in my wood stove!  With the door closed, I couldn't see in, and I was scared to look!  I could just imagine that nasty mouse jumping out at me, since that was the image I couldn't shake from my mind.  But a mouse in the wood stove?  How would he get in there? Well, they do show up in the darnedest places!

My fear was that I would have to just wait till "it" died in there, and then I'd get it out.  But I shared my story with Kris F. last night over the phone, and she said, "I bet it's a bird. I've had to get TWO out of my fireplace this spring, and I've got a great invention for capturing it."  

A bird??  Of course!  A bird isn't nearly as icky as a mouse... so if it could be saved, that would make me feel so much better!  Kris offered to drive over immediately and check it out.  I took her up on the offer.  She did say that it could be a bat...and that wouldn't be so good; we might not want to tangle with a bat.

Between the two of us, we put a piece of chicken wire (yea for having bits and pieces of fencing around the place) in front of the opening as we opened the wood stove door.  With a flashlight we could see the bird...and boy was it fired up, flapping for freedom and stirring up a cloud of ashes in our faces. 

When we took the screen away, and Kris attempted to capture it in her basket, the bird made a desperate move for freedom and got away, flying into the room, right toward the dining room windows.  Kris shrieked!  (Expletive deleted.) It took a couple of tries, but because the bird was determined to get out the window,  Kris trapped it against the glass by covering it with the basket.  Then, we put a board between the glass and basket, and got the scared, sooty bird trapped enough to get it outside.  And away it flew...fast as a missile.  It looked the size and shape of a robin, but having spent all day trying to escape the ash-filled stove, the actual coloring was indistinguishable. 

Yea for Kris' expertise and help!!  The crisis is over!