Warm thoughts (and misgivings) about all creatures great and small

I’m so relieved, but a little worried too.

On Sunday, I got word from my neighbors that the furnace in my little house in Indianola, in Kitsap County, was apparently “out.”

The house was cold, below the 50 degrees that I keep it at when not in residence. So I went down to check it out, with the thought that perhaps the oil (purchased at peak price last July) in the tank had run out in the recent cold spell.

I left with the idea of getting to Indianola before dark, so that I could make a fire in the wood stove in plenty of time to heat the old homestead before nightfall.

I got to the 12:45 ferry to find I was on overload for the 2:55 ferry. I’d checked the new schedule, even correctly read the weekend schedule information, but didn’t realize the earlier ferry takes only 50 cars from Orcas, vs. the usual 90 cars.

So, being an adaptable islander, I figured I’d take advantage of the extra time to call my old buddy from college days, Steve.

Steve has a habit of buying old homes and fixing them up, starting with a HUD house that he purchased for $3,000 in 1974 at an auction, and more recently, an old beauty off the fashionable 26th Street in Portland.

When I called, Steve was preparing to wrestle with squirrels.

He told me that there were squirrels in his attic that were increasing in number and becoming quite a problem. Plus, there was no access to the attic from inside the house, and once in the attic, it was insulated with “glass wool” — treacherous, nasty stuff. Plus, he was leery of heights, and had been rigging up scaffolding and harnesses to scale the heights of his roof. (He’s a retired IBM engineer, so he thinks things through beforehand).

He’s planned to direct the squirrels to a trap whereby they’d exit the attic. I just couldn’t get the thought of deliberate Steve crouching his way through a low-roofed, fiberglass-filled attic with a long-barreled squirrel gun, and I laughed at his dilemma as I described my own, the failed furnace.

He pointed out many of the possible ramifications of running out of oil: the need to “bleed” the line, frozen or burst pipes, etc.

So I was relieved that when I arrived at the house after dark, it wasn’t too cold and the water still ran through the pipes and there wasn’t any apparent “collateral” damage. The furnace reset button was unresponsive.

I was a little peeved at signs that critters had taken residence: little wads of sofa stuffing scattered on the living room carpet. But I remembered my mom’s facedown with a mouse when she lived in the house.

She told me of sitting at the dining room table eating her dinner and spying a little mouse across the room coming from a corner. It stopped stark still, and she swore it was frozen in fear on looking at her, a monster that outweighed the mouse by over 100 pounds.

Mom told me, “I thought to myself, ‘What harm could a little mouse do me?’ and it turned around a disappeared into some hole.”

That was so like my mom, who picked up hitch-hikers and gave them her jackets, and retreated into her own house when a neighbor exploded in anger because she didn’t want to embarrass him … her “live and let live” attitude extended to most everyone outside our family (which was her domain of control).

So I picked up the stuffing and swept the house, and then built a fire and watched the sad ending of Tess of the D’Urbervilles on Masterpiece Theater.

In the grey light of dawn, I checked the oil tank and found that there was a good 24 inches of oil left. I called the furnace company and was lucky to get a serviceman to come out that afternoon.

He checked the reset button and the thermostat, and identified the problem within three minutes as a loose wire. We went to the basement and he was so happy to find the wire chewed off right where the line entered the furnace, at the floor level. “I was afraid I’d have to look into the walls; this is a snap,” he told me.

“Do you think a mouse did it?” I asked.

“Yeah, or a rat, some kind of rodent.”

Yikes, this is totally different — a sinister, plague-bearing rat, a despised, long-tailed, baby-biting rodent!

So much for animal compassion and oneness with all creation! This was my karma for laughing at Steve’s squirrel situation.

So now as I plug all points of entry and ponder how to “dis-invite” the critters into my beachside cabin, another thought occurs to me: how lucky I was that the damage to the electrical wiring didn’t cause a fire.

Tomorrow: Fire Chief Mike Harris comments on the fire hazards created by creatures seeking warmth.