Our Chimney Adventure

About a week or so ago I heard what I thought was a bird in our chimney. I told Scottie that something didn't sound right. You see, every spring since we've been married I have always heard birds in the chimney. So hearing birds in the chimney is nothing new for us but this just didn't sound right. After a few days I stopped hearing the bird. And a few more days later there started to be a dead animal smell. Just got to love that, right? Not! Anyhow, we were told to burn a fire and it would help to get rid of the smell which it did but then we started seeing these guys:

You guessed it. Maggots. YUK! Those of you who know me know that I hate bugs and these were on the floor by the fireplace. When I saw them Scottie was out in our rug cleaning building so I called him to come in quickly. He came in and cleaned them all up. Praise the Lord for husbands who take care of that kind of stuff for us women who hate it. After that we only saw one or two here and there.

The next day after seeing those guys I started calling around to chimney sweeps and found one that could come and clean the chimney, take away the dead animal, and put a stainless steel cap on the top of the chimney so that we never have this happen again. For those of you that don't know what a stainless steel cap looks like this is it:

In this next photo you will see a hose going into the chimney just behind our woodstove. Where the hose is laying is where the dead animal was. Any of you guessed what it was yet? I can tell you it wasn't a little bird like what we thought it was. It was a duck. That's right a full grown duck.

The chimney guy was very nice about it and got it out fast without my having to see it. He had told me on the phone that it was probably a duck but I didn't believe him. I do now...lol. Now where was Timmy you might ask while all this was going on? Timmy was right there with Daddy watching everything they did and wanting to play with their equipment:

Paying for them to take care of that was worth the service call. Who knows how much worse things would have gotten had we just left it there and not called them. PTL for Chimney Sweeps!