It began as an uneventful day

Lena and I had finished medical rounds, treated the critical patients, and examined everyone else for updates for the day. I was sitting quietly at my desk, updating the medical log for the day. no serious emergencies, all the pigs were in their pen, everyone was behaving. Behind me, I heard the strangest sound. Scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratch. Then silence. Wait a minute? Did I really hear something? Maybe it was just a cat scratching its ears and bumping something?

I recalled hearing the sound two nights ago, and not being able to figure out where it came from. I'd searched and searched, and finally given up. And here it was again, it sounded like an animal stuck in the fireplace. The fireplace in the office is boarded over, because bad and evil cats like to climb up the chimney. This is an unapproved activity.

We'd recently had to replace the covering on the fireplace, could we possibly have locked something inside? We done a head count, and tried to pear up the chimney as far as we could, before screwing the new board in the place.

I tapped on the board. Silence. Now if somebody was in there trying to get out, don't you think they would scratch, meow, or do something to let me know they needed help?

I was probably wasting my time, but I found a screwdriver, and I began to remove the fireplace cover. Soon as I had it opened a crack, I could see something black flapping about. Oh great! A vampire bat at seven o'clock in the morning! Just what I needed for the day.

I took a closer look, and low and behold, it was the flying duck. If you recall, several months ago, someone in a little red car dumped a cardboard box full of ducks. One of my ducks adopted them, raised them, and now they roam about the farm. We never have figured out what kind of ducks they are, they look like they must be a mix between something domestic and something wild. And some of them can fly.

One bad black guy in particular, loves to fly to the top of the electric poles, to the top of the chimneys, to the top of trees. Why just a few days ago, we noticed him sitting on the top of the chimney, sticking his head down, and we had commented, "need to add that to the to-do list, cover the chimneys before the duck goes down". And at that time I had all kinds of visions of how one would remove a duck stuck halfway down the chimney. Dear god, please don't let it happen until I have time to get the chimney covered.

Well, I guess our boy shoved his head down, slipped and went all the way down the chimney. We brushed him clean of soot, and plopped him into a ducky swimming pool, where he drank down gallons of water, and then proceeded to bathe and preen. No worse for wear.

But he is staying in a pen, until the chimneys are covered!

Want to play handyman today?

Seriously, if you can come out and help us with this problem today, give me a holler at 540-854-0870. Thanks, Kerry