The Critter and the Day of Resurrection

Maundy Thursday began in such an interesting way. As I was feeding my cat, she and I both heard a strange noise coming from the chimney. The damper was closed and wedged shut so there was no way anything was getting inside. But, the noise was spooky and it freaked us both out.

I ran upstairs to wake my husband. My parents were also visiting. So, down came the men to see what was going on. No one wanted to open the damper to let out whatever was in there. It would have been impossible to catch a bird if that flew out of the chimney. Or, most likely it was a squirrel. If one of those rushed out into the family room, I'm sure furniture and books would have gone flying as we tried to catch it. Imagine Chevy Chase chasing the squirrel in National Lampoon's Christmas. That would have been us!

Instead, we decided to leave it there and see if it could get out on its own. We put an end table against the glass doors to keep them shut just in case it got by the damper. Then we waited.

All day Thursday it continued to make terrible scratching sounds. Thursday night, it grew silent. When the sun came up on Friday, it began again. Were we just going to leave it there and wait for it to die?

That sounded like the only option available to us. Until I googled, "how to get a squirrel out of your chimney."

The suggestion I found was to put a rope down the chimney and wait until it climbed up the rope on its own. Since my husband is afraid of heights, my father climbed the ladder, dropped a rope down the chimney, and tied it down. Then, we waited.

We waited until Sunday afternoon. We hadn't heard any noise from the chimney since sometime on Friday. My dad climbed back up the ladder and untied the rope. Then, my husband slowly opened the damper to see if anything would fall out.

Nothing!

The chimney was empty!

Thankfully, the chimney was empty and whatever was in there managed to use the rope to get out! I thought a lot about this incident that paralleled the Easter weekend. The critter became trapped on Maundy Thursday. While it didn't die, it wasn't until Easter afternoon that we discovered it was free. It felt horrible to know that the animal was going to die unless we could find a way to free it. I am thankful that my dad was visiting so he could climb the ladder and tie the rope which enabled the critter to escape its potential tomb.

I hope you had a wonderful Easter Sunday filled with the promise of new life.

The tomb is empty! Thanks be to God!