StevenLaura

The Fireplace

We have a fireplace in our home. It does us no good. The thing is so old, that the last chimney sweep to come look at it refused to go up and clean it. It sits in our living room of this old (at least 100 years old) house that we share with four other grad students. Each grad student has their own fire place, ours is especially lovely. Many of the others have been bricked in. We're not quite so lucky. So, when we moved in to our little room, we looked at the ugly fire place (that had a blanket stuffed up it so that rodents would not fall down it) and said, "This is ugly. Let's cover it up."

We duck taped a large piece of cardboard to the front of the fire place. We figured that would do for a bit, it actually IMPROVED the appearance of our living room significantly.

Today I am very glad we decided to do that. It appears the blanket did not hold up. I am sitting in said living room where, for the last fifteen minutes I've been surfing the web and checking my e-mail. About two minutes ago, I heard something drop softly to the ground inside the fire place. Now, every few minutes, I hear a scratch of sorts on the cardboard. (oops, there goes the scratching again.) Perhaps its one of our friends from last fall. (They've come back, by the way, and we hear them in our ceiling from time to time still.)

I've alerted Steve to the situation. He's taking an afternoon nap. He seems unconcerned. He continues taking an afternoon nap. I continue typing away. The rodent seems happy enough, not frantic or anything yet. I seem happy enough, and as long as the duct tape holds up, I am comfortable knowing that, if the rodent does not find his way out, we can un-duct tape the chimney after it starts to smell, and discover precisely what sort of rodent found its way in.

Ah, duct tape. How I love thee. Hold up against the rodent please.
Because if you don't...
I will no longer be calmly typing away on my computer. I will scream. Loud and long, I will scream. And stand on a sofa. I've never thought of myself as a particularily girly girl, but I know now that this is precisely what I'll do.

P.S. This is not really a picture of our fireplace. But it is a picture of an ugly fireplace, much like our fire place is ugly.

P.S.S. The rodent is starting to break through. I'm pulling my feet up, Steve is getting out of bed. I think I must go now.

-Laura

Update
(From Steve's point of view this time.)
So I am roused from my plesant nap by a wife insistant that this derranged rodent is going to come into our apartment from the fireplace. Laura is busy typing furiously (the above post) as an attempt to keep her nerves under control as the monster gets closer and closer to running amuck around our apartment. My reaction is to mutter something about a box to catch the poor critter, while Laura is outlining her plan of reinforcing the duct tape so that we can starve the beast into submission and only remove its rotting body when the smell gets to us (a murderous plan she outlined for all to see in the above post.)

After rummaging around for a bit, I decide to take a look at the critter, Laura, at this point really did stand up on the couch to escape the beast's inevitable escape. And that is when I realized that the wind, which is blowing pretty well today, seemed to be shifting the cardboard as the air pressure in the chimney changed. Alas our potential pet was only the wind. Having realized that our monster/critter did not exist (through a throughough examination of the fireplace, but only after first reinforcing the bottom of the cardboard) our murderous plots were given up, some laughter ensued and life returned to normal. The End.