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Down the chimney he came with a bump

No, not Santa Claus confused on his dates. About dinnertime last night, hubby and dog heard a noise of something falling down the woodstove chimney. Now, our house is 3 1/2 levels high (the basement window is up near the ceiling)…as tall as the oak trees, and the chimney starts above the roof. But, no further noises (luckily, we weren’t burning the stove last night).

Then, over the next couple of hours, the cats sat on top of the stove and stared at the bend in the pipe (it comes out the back of the stove) and on the hearth rug, twitching their tails. Hmm…..that’s usually proof there is something alive inside the house…usually with either four, six or eight legs, and usually unwelcome. Finally, I told hubby there must be something in there. He looked, but saw nothing. We decided to leave the door open…despite Yeti the canine horse (the 149 lb. dog) and three cats as a greeting committee. The critter’s options were that, starvation, or incineration. Hmmm…talk about the lesser of three evils.

At 10 pm, I went to take the dog for his evening pee, and when I came back in Paul shouted, stay out of the way, as he ran a round with a towel trying to trap the critter that had decided being out of the wood stove was better than being IN it. It ran around faster than lightning…about the size of a chipmunk. We decided to shut the animals into a room, then deal with the four-footed visitor. Before we got the last cat, it chased him to right near the back door (good), but the critter managed to go up a slick wood bench leg and get himself stuck at the bottom in a one inch by three in space that was about 15 inches deep! We tried to coax him out, and at one point thought the little thing had died of fright. NOT!

We left the back door open to try to chase him out if he wasn’t dead, and got a hammer and literally took off the top of the bench and pried apart the leg (a box of 1x4s surrounding a 2×4 support) . In the photo below, you can see the top off the bench–he was in the leg on the lower right of the photo…near the open door. When Paul coaxed him out with a long slat (those quilt hanging slats come in handy in the oddest of places!), the critter must have jumped about 6 feet, in the WRONG direction…. If you look REALLY closely, you can see this brown / gray critter splayed out in the corner of the bench/wall. Well, after 45 minutes of coaxing, tearing apart the bench, etc., we finally chased him out of the house to freedom.

Turns out it was Northern flying squirrel…tiny things about the size of a chipmunk, with a face kinda like a mouse. Here’s a link and another to see what they look like.

Can’t you just hear his mother saying “I TOLD you not to go out on a limb in a windstorm!”? LOL,,,,

So that was our excitement for the night! And I promise, it’ll be boring old placemats, but I really will post about quilting and sewing soon!

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