soapbox

So, for the last week or so, I’ve been hearing this weird clanging noise in the chimney at the house in Lyme. My bedroom upstairs has the window that’s closest to where the chimney exits the roof, and the corner by my nightstand is built out around where the chimney runs up through the house, so the noise has awakened me before my alarm sounds each morning.

EDITED: Tim says it’s too long for the front page! See more after the jump…

At first, it happened on a really sunny morning when things were warming up after a chilly night, so I figured (especially since it happened in a very stochastic way then) that it was the metal making sounds as it expanded.

After thinking about that some more, I decided that couldn’t be the case, since it never makes that much noise when it’s cooling down after a fire (or warming up as the fire gets going). I had settled on the wind causing the metal deflector at the top of the chimney or perhaps even some baffle down inside it to rattle, and, given how windy it was earlier this week, that made a little more sense.

Now, before I give the punchline, the wise among you will have already guessed the answer, which I discovered this morning by direct observation.

That’s right, folks, a very poorly informed woodpecker has spent the last week trying to peck holes in the metal deflector atop the chimney at the old farmhouse. While this fact did mildly amuse me upon its discovery, I’m now a bit worried for both the woodpecker and the chimney, not to mention annoyed with the rattling every morning, so I think I’ll speak to my landlord about it this weekend. My guess is that there’s some sort off deterrent we could employ (chemical, physical, or otherwise) to make the chimney less attractive to the woodpeckers out there who may not be as smart as they should be.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2006   at 11:54 am   and is filed under animals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.