Editor’s Note: wanted to be down at Refuge Farm for what could be the last major snow storm of the 2018 cycle. It wasn’t that big a deal. but having a fire and watching the sleet and wintry mix come down deep in the Virginia countryside is pretty cool. As to Marlow’s fine story this morning, I have my own tales of inadvertent intrusion on our sovereign property. I wish chimney caps worked on Turkey Buzzards. We had a colony of twenty or more (estimates range s high as 30, sober count) but apparently only two of them- Edward and Edwina- are using the burrow entrance to the barn to sleep in relative comfort (and poop on the tractor) now that I have the doors secured against foxes and feral cats. We all have our challenges, though Ed and Edwina are protected by the Migratory Species Act and I respect their rights. Not the other 28, though.

-Vic

After having lived in a no-fireplace tropical land for sixteen years, our six fireplace, three chimney Coastal Empire digs caused me once again to ponder the need for clear chimney flues, inserts and dampers as well as the non-negotiable requirement for functioning chimney caps.

I was initially inspired to consider these issues actively this past summer when we observed a bunch of flower nectar drunk bees from our side garden spew forth from an upstairs room fireplace.

We found these inebriated honey and bumble bees so buzzed that they were slip sliding away on the room’s tile floor. After herding these hammered drunks into a paper grocery store bag for their return to our garden, we lit that room’s gas log fireplace for a 30 minute clearing operation of any other potential invaders. We were not bothered further after running similar death-to-intruders operations in our other fireplaces.

Chimney caps were standard in the midwestern cities of my and W’s births. These mil-spec caps became indeliably marked in my mind, when one mid 1950’s summer eve of family TV watching was interrupted by a bat flying out of the living room chimney to terrorize us. Some of us children were dispatched to get a paper bag and broom to corral the invader. Ever the engineer and detailed observer of new things, my father sought out and hand wound his Bell & Howell 8mm movie camera to film the bat’s flight and capture operations.

In the grainy 60 year old color film, viewers can still see my father’s right arm directing his volunteers — me and my younger brother — in the capture operation as the bat dive bombed my mother and sisters as they cowered with their heads face planted in the seat cushions of the overstuffed living room chairs.

The need for chimney caps here in coastal Georgia was reinforced this winter by a story from a local that was one part funny and one part scary.

This neighbor had a racoon climb down the living room chimney. A real big dude. They found the coon sleeping on their fireplace mantel. Initially Animal Control would not come and retrieve it. Quickly thinking, they called back the government no-help desk and said they thought it was rabid. The no longer recalcitrant reps from Animal Control arrived within thirty minutes. After the intruder’s removal, proper chimney caps were immediately ordered and emplaced.

It took my my family — i.e., my father — another incident a year later to cap our two-flue single chimney.

Just after performing her summer morning ablutions, my mother entered the parental bedroom to see in the fireplace a plump squirrel looking back at her. She screamed something blood curdling but largely unintelligible. Her bat-boys came to the rescue as she had leapt to the top of the bed.

To this day, I am not sure why, but we suburban urchins treated this small rodent with respect not batting it about, but baiting it with peanut butter and herding the little pecker out of the house. We were lucky to have confronted an ordinary, and quite domesticated, squirrel. We could have faced off with a most ravenous and foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent with a mile-wide vicious streak. Consequently, we kids were spared from soiling and disgracing ourselves with fear.

No, that fate was reserved for my father later that evening, when my sure-to-be-suffering-from-PTSD mother confronted him at the dinner table with the undeniable facts as seen from the window next to the kitchen dinner table that all of our neighbors’ houses had chimney caps installed and no reports of household fauna invasions.

Crosman .22 cal pneumatic pellet pistol model 130

Not surprisingly, I, as the oldest child, was dragooned into doing the high work for this cap’s emplacement the next weekend, since my father abhorred heights. As recompense, my father bought a right and powerful, pellet pistol and gave me enough pellets and instruction to learn how to shoot varmints that might enter the house in the future.

The following parochial school year I learned to sing in Latin the Catholic Mass of the Dead. Unfortunately, I had to wait the passage of five years before singing these requiem-for-a-squirrel lyrics after I picked off one of several who were prying off the chimney cap cover:

Pie Jesu Domine, Pious Lord Jesus,
Dona eis requiem. Give ’em rest.
Pie Jesu Domine, Pious Lord Jesus,
Dona eis requiem sempiternam. Give ’em everlasting rest.

On a brighter note, I still wonder if that long ago squirrel looked in that bedroom’s comfy abyss that morning and saw, not his fate or his character, but the existence of a heretofore undiscovered free-food-today buffet.

Another reason to install chimney caps — not having to
explain killing Santa to children (copyright Gahan Wilson)

So, take it from me, if you value your peaceful abode a lot more than 500 bucks for a set of chimney caps, folks, find them at Home Depot and have a handyman install them. Otherwise, you’ll be calling an Animal Control no-help desk or someone like me who’ll come right over and kill and remove the critters . . . for a grand.

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