A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. That's the proverb I've been told most of my life.

However, I can tell you that a bird in the hand is always better than a bird in the house. Some of the larger home improvement stores even seem to have their own resident birds inside. While in West Jefferson recently, I had a little brown bird buzz right over my head in the plumbing section. I've been spending a lot of time there, you see, but no more. That's a done deal.

Anyway, I did recently experience a rare moment involving a live bird when it decided to try to move in to one of the most inauspicious places in my house-the wood stove. Thankfully, it was early spring and not late winter and no fires have been built in a good while. That wouldn't be a pleasant situation.

As I think of it, I've always been captivated by birds, if you'll pardon the pun. As a child I was duped into believing that story about putting salt on a bird's tail and stopping it from flying away. Obviously, if you can get close enough to put salt on a bird's tail, it might be a theory one could test.

However, it apparently is fairly entertaining for adults to watch small children chase birds around the yard with a shaker of salt and a big dose of determination. Come to think of it, I might have to break out the old bird-stopping salt shaker for my own progeny. As I write this, it's April Fool's Day.

Maybe the determination to catch a bird was born of the fact that we're all a little jealous of their ability to fly. Then again, maybe we're just mean.

I learned to catch my first birds after I discovered the B-B gun, which did a fairly efficient job of knocking the little fellows down on the ground. However, while you could have your bird and eat it too, you couldn't hold it healthy and alive.

There were a few occasions when I found a bird that had fallen from the nest or had a hurt wing and attempted to nurse them back to health. Oddly enough, though, they always disappeared when I went to school.

"It must have gotten away while you were at school," they'd tell me while giving each other that knowing look. Yeah, right.

I once even caught a bat under a tree and showed it to my parents. I remember being horrified when my father slapped it out of my hand and tried to stomp it on the porch. I understand now that a ‘friendly' bat is very dangerous due to concerns about rabies, but then I just thought it was mean. It ran to the edge of the porch, jumped off and flew away. That was how I found out that bats can't fly that well unless they jump off something. A bat usually falls and then flies; that's why they hang upside down most of the time.

Anyway, other than quail, grouse and turkeys, I actually wasn't much of a bird killer. And even less so after I saw a neighbor boy shoot one off the power line. As it fell, he was genuinely surprised, judging by the look on his face. He rushed over to the bird and then cried as it bled and died in his hands with blood in its little beak and its tongue sticking out.

That's how I learned that birds have tongues. He was probably only about eight or nine years old at the time.

Come to find out, his father had an affinity for nature and songbirds in particular had already warned him not to be shooting birds. You see how he listened. Apparently he felt bad for the bird and for being disobedient. I remember hearing things like, "What if it had little chicks to feed?" However, empathy is a foreign language to a young boy with a B-B gun. In fact, I'd say two of the most dangerous creatures in the world, pound for pound, are cats and little boys. And both are bad news for little birds.

Yes, little boys are just dangerous. I know-I was one. And just watch a cat ruthlessly hunt down and kill small mammals and birds and then play with them instead of eating them. Once you've seen that, you'll always be glad that domestic cats aren't the size of lions.

Anyway, I was talking about a bird in the present, not the one that died so long ago. The family had been telling me about hearing a noise in the stove pipe for a couple of evenings. However, I had dismissed it as rain or wind or creosote falling down the pipe. This particular day, I had arrived home for lunch and heard a distinct rustling sound in the pipe. I first imagined a squirrel in the stove, so I grabbed a leather glove and peered carefully inside the door.

The last thing I wanted was a rampaging squirrel in the house. I once shot one while squirrel hunting, only to realize that I had only stunned it (maybe missing but causing it to fall from the tree and be knocked unconscious). It woke up while it was in my big hunting pocket and nearly scared the life out of me. It wasn't quite the "Mississippi Squirrel," but I definitely could relate to the song.

Anyway, there was nothing inside the stove, but I did hear the noise again when I closed the stove door and realized it was more the fluttering sound of a bird than the scratching of a squirrel. Getting a screwdriver, I took apart the pipe and the stove union and reached inside. I couldn't feel anything, so I started shaking the pipe. After several tries, I felt something fall into my gloved fingers and I extracted a small male bluebird. His spring colors were quite fetching, along with his small orange breast patch. I'm not sure how it even got into the pipe, which has a cover on the top.

Obviously the bird was terrified and most likely fairly hungry and thirsty as well. As I smoothed down his wings to keep him from thrashing about, he chirped at me loudly. From the tone, I'd say that meant, "Help!"

After stroking his head a few times in an attempt to calm him, I took him outside and let him go free. The kids were in school, so they didn't get to see it. I'm sure they would have enjoyed that, but I figured two days in a stovepipe was enough captivity for a bird to edure. As I look back on it now, it was just another bird set free while the children were in school-only this time I did the releasing and I didn't tell anyone that it "got away."
 

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