The Boisvert Life

I was leaning against the oven, talking to my sister on the phone
today, when a loud noise startled me.  It was coming from the hood
over the stove, that vents steam to the outside.  I quickly
decided it sounded like an animal of some sorts was caught and trying
to scratch it’s way back up to the roof.  My mind raced….a
clumsy chipmunk, some poor bird trying to find a warm refuge from the
snow, or, yikes, a bat.   Lindsay looked back and forth from
the noise, to me, with a furrowed brow and a look like, "don’t you hear
that mommy?"  She then starting pointing and telling me about the noise, over
and over, in case I wasn’t yet aware of it.  "Dat, Dat, Dat,
DAT!"  I told my sister I was going to wait for Barney to come
home and take care of it,  but she insited I free the animal
immediately because if it died, I’d never be able to live with the
guilt. 

I agreed and sucked it up.  I got out a
trash bag, put on my leather gloves (in case the bat had rabies)  , taped a side of the bag to the wall and held the other side up
while I slid the grating out of the way.  Nothing.  More
scratching.  Stuff falling into my bag, but not an animal.  I
don’t even want to know what that stuff was…

There was a
large fan in the way of my sight into the piping, and I feared I’d have
to dismantle the entire casing that runs up into the cupboard, when
suddenly, a tiny head popped down and looked around.  I yanked the
bag back into place, unable to determine the type of animal in the
shadows, when a tiny, and I mean tiny little bird hopped into the
bag.  He was still holding a stick in his beak, refusing to
release his hard earned nesting material.  I closed the bag around
him and rushed him outside where he gratefully flew to the roof, right
next to the vent opening!  I warned him if he went right back to
the vent I’d either leave him there and he’d have to figure his own way
out, or worse yet, put him in a little cage to be poked and yelled at
by Lindsay for the next year.  ;) 

He decided it best to find another vent and flew to the neighbors roof.