Deborah Cooke: Author

As some of you know, Mr. Math and I live in an old house. It has charm and character, and it is an ongoing project. It is also a source of unexpected adventure.

We’re having one of those adventures today.

Our house is Victorian, so was built when people used coal to heat their homes. It has two surviving chimneys, each of which has two flues. Once upon a time, these flues led to four separate fireplaces or woodstoves, of which three survive. The exhaust from the modern furnace uses one flue of one chimney and the other three flues lead to the remaining fireplaces. The fireplaces have not been used for a long time, although the mantles are pretty in the respective rooms. This is because they are built for burning coal, so are very shallow. (Too shallow for burning wood.) There is an idea that we will convert one or more of these to gas fireplaces, but there are technical issues, so that idea hasn’t seen much action yet.

(As an aside, the house originally had a third chimney for the kitchen, although that one had been dismantled over the years and capped off in the attic. We did add a gas fireplace to the kitchen when it was renovated – an insert that looks like a coal fireplace with a new fireplace mantle – and had to open the clogged flue and add a new chimney for that. It was complicated but totally worth it.)

As a result, we have one chimney which is “warm” – and has actually been rebuilt since we moved in – and one that is “cold”. The warm one has the furnace exhaust in it. The cold one has only two unused fireplace flues. When the warm chimney was rebuilt, we had its second flue capped off. The cold chimney, however, was home to a couple of bats at that time and we are big fans of how many insects a group of bats can eat daily. That chimney was left open at the cap – for the bats – but after having bats in the house several times, my sense of humor about them diminished. Mr. Math blocked both flues just above the respective fireplaces so we had divided quarters from the bats. All was good. In recent years, though, a virus has killed a great many bats and Mr. Math is sure our bats are no more. We certainly don’t see them patrolling the garden in the evenings any more.

We didn’t think about the cold chimney being open at the top until this morning – when a ruckus revealed that a bird had fallen down the flue that leads to the fireplace in my office. It was struggling against the barrier, right behind the mantle. Mr. Math removed his improvised blocking of the fireplace and the bird flew up the chimney as a result – but not out of it. It’s still fluttering in there, so I have a sheet over the mantle. I’m waiting for it to get tired and come down, so we can relocate it to the garden. There will be a huge mess of ash when that happens so my office will get a big cleaning later today.

I hope the bird makes its move and the adventure ends soon.

Edited to add – adventure concluded! The bird came down the chimney, went around the sheet and flew around the house for a while. It pooped on one the light fixtures where it took refuge, then made a run for the big window on the stairs. Mr. Math grabbed it and released it outside – he said it flew until it was out of sight, it was so relieved. A starling, and evidently one that was uninjured. Phew. Back to work!