Just yesterday I was vacuuming the room where our wood stove sits. Seeing as it’s been hot as hell lately there hasn’t been much need for a fire. So, I was wondering where the ashes were coming from. There were ashes all over the outside “French-Style” double glass doors. It could be from a strong wind (not lately) or the flu could be open (nope). Or the ashes could be caused by a downdraft (I just said the flu was closed, no downdraft).
Oh yeah, “French” doors (they suck)! It also has a blower, thermostat, chrome look chimney stacks; and something that’s alive. I don’t care how nice a unit you have (actually it’s old and falling apart) if there is something living, or worse, stuck, inside the unit, you gots yourself a problem.
I first started to realize something was up when I noticed that one of our cats was staring at the glass door. Being the dumb-as-a-rock housecat that she is, I deduced she was simply staring at her own reflection.
I then realized that this particular cat (we have three) had already been through the reflection fascination phase. If you have cats you know there’s also this phase where they are fascinated by running water. Starting to sound familiar? I thought so.
Getting back to the ashes: The ashes were back. After just having vacuumed the offending former pyre mere hours ago I realized that these were not the same ashes. The same ones as before. Before, as in last night. Last night, as in when I got drunk and decided to vacuum. Therein laid my confusion.
I deduced, obviously, that if I had already vacuumed up said ashes and then said ashes reappeared soon thereafter, some fucking thing is trying to get out of my wood stove!! And it’s still in there. The cat’s still staring at it but she’s not talking. Fucking ingrate cat.
Okay, so what would YOU do? It could be a BAT! We’ve had BAT problems in the past and they are some scary little motherfuckers.
A mouse we can handle. As I said we have three cats. Mice usually wouldn’t stand a chance, but my cats are pure dumb housecats. They might not even notice it run right by them. They might not feel like chasing anything at the moment. The last time the cats and I saw a mouse I screamed like a little girl, causing the cats to scatter.
They were not afraid of the mouse, they were afraid of a grown man jumping around, screaming like Pippi Longstocking! As they damn well should have been.
So, am I supposed to just let it die? I don’t even know what the holy hell it is! I can just see me opening the freaking wood-stove door, on my knees (it’s low) and having an ash covered, half starved, fully pissed off, fucking blind-ass bat flying all over my house. Guano flying everywhere.
So therein lies my dilemma. I either let some damn thing loose in my house or I let it die in my woodstove.
This is just what I wished for a summertime present. Like I don’t have enough bullshit on my mind, now I have to worry about what might be dying in my fucking woodstove! I’m a humanitarian (no, really)! I would be crushed having to clean some dead thing out of the pile of ashes.
It makes you think about your own pets. Little animals that are as important to you as if they were your children. I wouldn’t want to be a pet and have to be compared to a child in a “Sophie’s Choice” type situation (see William Styron), but usually the little suckers are able to pull your heartstrings just like your own kids would.
I just checked on the stove. Now there are two of my cats staring at the glass doors of the wood stove like they’re two little kids watching Saturday morning cartoons. This is not a good sign.
Unfortunately when it comes to opening the doors of said woodstove and letting this thing loose, I don’t think I could handle something running out into the house. Whatever it is would be chased by three overweight housecats that have the combined brain power of a ham sandwich. They wouldn’t know what to do with a rodent if it turned itself in.
I sure as hell am not gonna kill it whatever it is. I don’t even fish because I think it might hurt the fish, and I live on a lake!
I have given this a lot of thought. I can’t just sit back and let this thing starve in my woodstove. Luckily there’s a sliding glass door right near the woodstove. There’s also another door to the room that cuts it off from the rest of the house. I guess I can cover the carpeting with newspaper then open the door to the outside to give the varmint an escape route. I can then quickly open the door to the woodstove and run like a little bitch into the house. I also have to wait until I’m the only one home. I don’t want anyone hearing me screaming like a little girl if something jumps out at me.
There’s so much violence in the world I just can’t bring myself to kill anything. Or maybe I’m just a big pussy, who knows? Whatever it is that’s stuck in my woodstove didn’t get stuck there on purpose and doesn’t deserve to die because of it. Or because of death being convenient! Letting something starve to death because you don’t want to get your carpet dirty is just fucked up.
We could draw a lot of correlations from this to what is happening in the world when it comes to salvation. Who is chosen to be saved? We don’t even hear about our own young Americans dying these days. I can only imagine the horrors that are a bleak reality to millions of people, because you have to use you imagination these days bcause you sure as hell don’t see anything about war on the T.V. news.
Maybe a little blurb about reaching some new disturbing casualty rate will sneak in, but the type of coverage that helped to stop the insanity in Viet Nam has now become passé. I guess the “powers that be” finally realized that bad news doesn’t sell unless it’s connected to some drug-addled celebrity.
It’s a sad state of affairs, death everywhere. From Iraq to Afghanistan to my woodstove. It’s all around us, always has been and always will be.
I try to arrive at my own decisions and opinions by placing myself in the shoes of the “other guy”. Sometimes this “other guy” is a black person, a soldier, a cop, or in this case maybe a mouse. So I think about being a mouse trapped in a fireplace filled with old ashes, not being able to escape. The only visibility I have is occupied by a large vicious animal that wants to torture and eat me (her name is Yoko). And I’m starving.
I would think that should stir up some kind of compassion, and in my case it did. By doing a simple act like opening a fucking door I can bring salvation to a mouse. Sound ridiculous doesn’t it?
Unless you’re the proverbial mouse. Or the real mouse for that matter.
Shit.
I gotta go open a door, thanks for playing along, folks.
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