"Harold & Susan Vordos" wrote in message ...
"Bob Chilcoat" wrote in message
...
Last week I was cleaning up after lunch when I heard a noise in the family
room. Went in and heard something scraping around in the fireplace flue.
"Crap, a bird must have gotten in there." mutters I. As I'm looking in
through the glass doors of the fireplace insert, suddenly something big
and
black jumps down from the smoke shelf and bangs into the glass, trying to
get out. Scares the crap out of me! Great, a very dirty squirrel.

big snip-----
Today I noticed a squirrel hanging around the bird feeder with a large
bare
spot on his back. Singed fur? I hope so. As soon as the ice is off the
roof, I'm putting a hardware cloth cap over the chimney flue.

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)


Interesting report, Bob. Much like the one we experienced about ten years
ago when we found a raccoon living in our chimney. It, too, went through
a fire and survived. Congratulations of the successful eviction!

Harold

I'm building a new house and have a very large flue (in a very large
chimney) - there's a half ton slab of concrete as a rain cap over the
whole thing and the thought of a coon getting in there was not very
pleasant. To discourage the little buggers, I welded up a square
frame of 1/8 x 1 inch strip, welded additional strips across the open
frame and welded 16d nails, point up, on the strips. I welded on some
brackets made from strips of angle on the sides so the whole thing
sits in the flue with the nails pointing up. To keep the birds out,
there's some chicken wire across the bottom.


I had a red squirrel fall down the flue in an unused fireplace in my
current house. Beats me how he got in since the screen around the
flue opening was intact, but it was amazingly hard to get the little
idiot pointed to the open door (8 feet from the fireplace). This is
an unused fireplace with no screen. When I opened the damper the
little bugger bounced on the floor and took off. Maybe next time I'll
let the cats take care of the problem.

Paul