A Finch Is Caught In The Wood Burner!

Oh dear, here I tell the tale of my parents' adventure yesterday. The main characters to this (true) tale are my parents, a finch and a wood burner. Together they made for an interesting afternoon! Let me begin to fill in the details...

My mom and dad are sitting in their living room, watching television. It is the afternoon and they are relaxing (thumbs up for retirement!). They both hear a bang and look at one another.

"What was that?" my mom asks.

"Oh, something probably just fell," my dad answers. He shrugs off the noise and goes back to watching the TV show Judge Judy.

"Exactly!" my mom says. "Something might have dropped somewhere and we need to figure out what made the noise."

She hears the bang again and turns her head toward the sound. What she sees, she tells me today as she recants the tale, is unexpected. She sees the face of a finch in the glass of the wood burner in the corner of the room!

The antique-looking wood burning stove sits in my parents' living room, to the right of the television. It is attached to the chimney. Luckily, it is not in use that day!

As my mom tells me this part of the story, I say "No way!" Then, I think back to last week when I saw a finch sitting atop their chimney, singing at the top of its lungs. Poor thing, did it lose its balance and tumble backwards down the chimney yesterday?

My mom continues with the story and I re-focus on what she is telling me over the phone. She tells me that the bird is barely moving and is covered in soot from the wood burner. She says that while they had the chimney cleaned last year, there is still some soot inside. My heart goes out to the little bird as she describes it to me.

"Your dad and I debated what to do," she says. They discuss whether opening up the lower door of the stove is the best option; the bird could fly around the large room and be hard to navigate out of the house. In addition, the soot could really dirty the room.

Instead, they decide that my mom will reach in the door of the wood burner and catch the finch in her hands as it looks small in size. She will then release the bird outside.

With plan in place, my mom goes to the garage and returns to the living room wearing her gardening gloves. She slowly opens up the wood burner's door and gently holds the finch between her gloves. It is barely moving.

My mom walks with the nestled bird to the patio door attached to the room and my dad opens the door. She releases the bird in a motion that she describes to me as, "throwing a baseball" into the sky. What a great description!

The soot-covered finch flies into the air and keeps on flying. My parents watch as it soars through the sky, flying farther away from them with each second that passes. The finch is free again!

What a gentle way my parents decided to care for the bird. I am proud of their determination to help the bird.

I am pleased that the finch is now free! I hope that it has been able to get clean from the soot. My parents have a bird bath in their backyard if the finch needs to use it!

I hope no more finches fall down the chimney. How scared the bird must have been! What a story, what a rescue!