Wood Stove Cage Aux Folles

Won Over By Reality

by Tim Bayer

WEBSTER, NY—(Weekly Hubris)—5/3/10—Samantha suddenly leaped off my lap, traipsed across the living room, jumped up on the cold wood stove, and then sat and stared. There was something inside the stovepipe that ought not to be there.

Because the wood stove had not been in operation since the previous day, the stove and pipe were cold. As I approached Samantha, perched on the stove, my other cat, Lazer, followed. Then, I heard scratching from inside the horizontal section of the stovepipe. Clearly, realized Samantha, Lazer and I, there was a critter in that pipe!

I have a fondness for nature’s creatures (see one of my earlier columns, “Dancing With Woodchucks”). The animals I like best are those that don’t bite me, though. My first thought was that a scared squirrel or chipmunk confined in a stovepipe would be a prime exemplar of animals that might bite me. Bummer.

Now, I had a problem. If I were to disassemble the stovepipe, one result could be a soot-covered, scared, wild creature with teeth loose inside my house. Another option was needed.

I went outside and opened the stovepipe “clean-out.” Perhaps the entrapped animal would see the light from the opened clean-out and leave via that route. Right then. I went back inside and looked into the firebox—nothing. I tapped on the stovepipe. No response. Perhaps the animal had left through the clean-out as I was making my way back inside? I couldn’t be sure, so I went back to working on my computer.

After about 15 minutes, I checked the wood stove again and was pleased to discover that the critter was no longer in the stovepipe. It was now in the firebox. More good news—the invader was toothless. It was a Starling. The glass doors made the wood stove look like a birdcage, complete with bird. New problem, though: How was I going to safely get the bird, unharmed, from the wood stove in my living room back outdoors to . . . the big blue room?

Here was my plan: I would get a towel and let it dangle down like a curtain from my hands. I would then open the wood stove doors and push the towel in toward the back of the stove, safely confining the bird till I could capture it.

That was my plan. It was a good plan. I liked that plan. I was proud to be part of that plan—right up until the Starling scooted under the towel, out of the wood stove, and into the living room, where there were two cats.

Awww-right, said the cats: Game on!

The bird flew towards the middle of the room, and Samantha leaped instantly and wildly at its sudden, unexpected flapping. But the bird was already headed up towards the ceiling and was just out of reach of the springing feline. The cat missed, fell back to the floor and, on gaining the traction of the carpet, jetted immediately up in pursuit of the flying feathered thingy. Yahoooooooo!!!

The ensuing lap around the living room might best be described as NASCAR in three dimensions. Up near the ceiling, the bird cornered hard as it sideswiped the wall, then headed towards the picture window. Meanwhile, two cats on the floor were bumpin’, rubbin’ and tradin’ paint as they came out of Turn One side by side in hot pursuit of the race leader, five feet overhead.

The invisible wall made of glass stopped the bird’s bid for freedom and it flapped futilely against the picture window. I moved towards the pane to try to get to the bird before one of the cats. In the moments it took me to reach the window, Samantha had scampered from the floor to the couch and, in one fluid motion, leaped skyward.

Bap! Samantha hit the window, just missing the flapping Starling.

Just as a tossed football will obey Newton’s laws of gravity, Samantha’s flight continued on a predicable path towards the floor, and I reached out to make the reception. A football caught in flight is completely passive. A cat caught in mid-flight . . . not so much. Also, footballs don’t have sharp claws on the end of flailing paws that dig into your arms when a reception is made.

I carried Samantha to the bedroom, where I could close the door and confine her. Cat having been released onto bed, I closed the door and headed back to the “flying bird and one jumping cat” drama that continued to play out before the picture window.

Lazer picked right up where Samantha had been picked off in mid-air. He jumped, missed, and landed on the couch, then crouched down, eyes focused skyward, ready to spring again. I reached Lazer before his next leap and picked him up. Off to the bedroom again. Open door. Deposit cat. Close door. Back to the living room.

Sheesh!

With its four-footed tormentors confined, the bird had landed on the windowsill just behind the curtain. This was the break that I needed.

I was able to move in behind the curtain and use it to trap the bird against the window without harming it. I gently folded its wings in my cupped hands, placing its head between my finger and thumb, and carefully removed the Starling from the sill.

With a bird in the hand (and two cats in the bedroom), I went out the back door and completed the catch and release process. A light toss up in the air and the Starling was off across the street to land (and rest) in the top of a tall, tall tree in my neighbor’s yard.

The bird was now free and the wood-stove-turned-birdcage was once again a wood stove (a wood stove that, for a while, was closely monitored for any unusual activity by Samantha and Lazer).