For those of you who haven't been aware, we've had a chimney sweep stuck in our chimney for over two weeks now. No, not a chimney sweep of the Dick Van Dyke/Mary Poppins variety, but a a rather small round plastic brush thing that for some reason is called a hedgehog in French. Yes, it seems nous avons un hérisson coincé dans notre cheminée! Scary image, indeed!
We were finally able to beg and bribe a proper chimney sweep to come help us figure out just how to get said hérrisson out of the chimney. And since said hérisson is attached to a pole about 8-9 meters long, we knew that this whole supplication process would need a lot of coffee, perhaps some whiskey, and a huge piece of humble pie since it was our fault the damn thing was stuck in there in the first place.
The chimney man came around yesterday morning, nice and early, and none of us heard him knocking on the door. Six people, three huskies and not a one of us noticed this small Santa look-a-like banging on the front door. When his wife called me about 10 minutes later to ask us let him in, I wasn't sure he really wanted to anymore.
Luckily, thanks to my charming smile and adorable accent, he came in and grumpily got to the job. He started shoving his chimney sticks up the pipe, trying to catch hold of that rascally hérisson with some sort of hook. He moved the pole up and down, side to side, catching hold for a split second until the hérisson would somehow become free again. He finally decided that we needed to shove that hérisson right out of the top of the chimney and hope that by doing so it would pop off the pipe cap and thus finally be free. Ok, it sounded like a good idea...
He managed to get the hérisson to stick out of the top of the pipe as planned but a split second later he realized that he had somehow caught his hook on the chimney cap. A quick scurry to the attic with The Man in tow, and the reality of the situation became clear. We not only had a hérisson stuck in our chimney, we now had Captain Hook's hand as well. Both of which were attached to their own 10-12 meter long poles.
The Man and The Sweep had a good long look at the snow and ice covered fake slate roof that was so gingerly placed by Gadot Roofing oh so long ago and wondered just when all that winter would melt so they could walk over to that chimney and cut both Hook and the hérisson free. A five minute job that will have to wait until there's a good bit of sunshine and a nice spring thaw...in December. Please people, cross your fingers.
'Till then, I'll be playing connect the dots with the chicken pox spots Rosie decided to sport this morning, The Man will be trying to fix some of the redecorating I did back in September, and the tribe will try to convince Pére Noel that really they have been super SUPER good this year. Comedy at it's best.
"LIVE from the Birth Control Bed & Breakfast, it's LIFE! With a hedgehog!"
1 comment:
Perfect!! Happy Holidays!!! xoxoxo
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