{day 54}

This morning my dad climbed onto our roof to figure out what's been keeping us up at night, looked down into the chimney, and saw two eyes staring back at him. Turns out that this little big guy was stuck in our chimney. He was looking pretty irritated about some man disrupting his sleep (but I think the feeling was mutual, since my dad hadn't been able to sleep in days -- he and my mom even went down into the basement and slept in my brother's room one night because the noises were so bad). He looks like a barn owl to me, but I'm no owl expert so if anyone knows, feel free to correct me.

Our chimney is a false chimney, so it doesn't actually connect with our (gas) fireplace. We were really surprised that there was a hole at the top, especially since the inside is just wood (wouldn't snow and rain make it rot eventually?). The owl was about 20 feet down at the bottom. My dad called a wildlife center and they said that it's fairly common for owls to get stuck in chimneys, but if you put a ladder down there, they can climb out at night. Well, we didn't have a ladder that would fit into our chimney. My dad is a really great guy though, so he spent all afternoon engineering a custom-built owl ladder.

After he was finished, he and John climbed up onto the roof (which isn't that easy) and put the ladder down the chimney.

I was down on the ground the whole time taking pictures and praying that neither of them fell off the roof because that's the kind of photo documentation I didn't want. But luckily they both have good balance. Here's a picture my dad took of what the chimney (aka the abyss) looks like.

So now that the ladder's in place, the only thing we can do is wait and see if the owl (aka Hedwig or Pigwidgeon, depending on who you ask -- Rachael and I had differing opinions) can figure out how to climb out.

UPDATE: 

We didn't hear any sounds all night, which could have been either good news or bad news. My dad climbed up to the roof again Sunday morning and looked down, and the owl was gone. So that's good news for both my dad and the owl (now they can both sleep without disturbing each other). A neighbor told us that three owls were hatched in the chimney of the Daybreak HOA office and were just old enough to take wing, so this could have been one of them. 

We're planning on covering the chimney up so that no other owls/rats/raccoons/cats/small children decide to hang out down there. We started posting about the owl on facebook as soon as we figured out that it was down there, and we got a lot of responses. It surprised me how interested people were in this story. I thought this particular update (one of many) was entertaining, so I'm sharing it.

So hopefully the Daybreak owl family is now reunited and off feasting on vermin somewhere. Best of luck, owls.