FLICKER THE WOODPECKER AND THE SILVER-BIRCH TREE

The Flicker's Escape - with a little help from his friends.

          Several days ago, while working on the computer in my studio, I heard a strange sound.  For a moment, I thought it was one of the chickens scratching just outside the door but why would it be scratching away on what sounded like metal is what had me stumped?  It took about a day to figure out where the noise was coming from because every time I searched for the noise, whatever was causing it, suddenly became very quiet.  However, eventually I discovered it was coming from inside the stovepipe; a bird must have landed on the top of the chimney and although it has a cover, must have fallen inside.  The part, which really had me scratching my head was, since the stove pipe goes straight down to the wood-stove, is why hadn't the bird fallen all the way to the bottom.  Unfortunately, at the time, after spending two days laying a laminate-floor in our upstairs bedroom, my right knee had given out and I was in a great deal of pain; hardly in any shape to climb up on the stove and separate the metal stovepipe.  What to do, was the big question?

          And then - flash - kaboom - what I thought was a good idea, came to mind.  Since I'd hired my good friend Justin Higgs to dig a trench from the house to my workshop with his Bobcat excavator so an electrician could install 220V wiring for the heavy-duty, 16" band-saw I'd recently purchased, I asked him for his help.  What should have been a simple job, turned out to be anything but simple.  Usually, all a person has to do is unscrew a couple of screws and separate the lengths of stovepipe but because of the weight of the double-walled pipe, acting as a chimney, the weight forced the stovepipe together so tightly, it was impossible to dismantle.  Finally, after cutting the chimney apart with an electric grinder, Justin was able to pull the stovepipe out and release the bird, which turned out to be a Northern Flicker, a medium-sized member of the woodpecker family.

          The flicker, since it must have been exhausted from maintaining itself from falling all the way down the chimney, not having anything to drink for two or three days and then being held in two big hands, didn't have much energy to fly off.  After giving the thirsty flicker a drink, I placed it in a small pen in the chicken coop before phoning my friend Gary Stairs (member of a bird association).  When he arrived, he let the bird loose and although it flew a fair distance away, I told him to take it to his place and release the bird into the forest, otherwise our cat Finnegan would make short work of it.  I imagine, after finding itself enclosed in an empty Moosehead beer case and finally released near Grand Lake, our friend Flicker must have had one big strange tale to tell his friends and family once he flew home.

Bill Leeman Holding the Ladder While Ronnie Fish Begins Sawing Down the Dying Silver-Birch and Justin Higgs Eyeing the Gap in the Cedar Hedge Where the Tree Once Grew.

          As much as I hated to remove the big old silver-birch from the front yard, it was a potential and perhaps lethal accident waiting to happen.  I'd considered just removing the huge dead limbs from the tree but because the bark at the base of the tree was easily removed with just a person's hands, I decided the whole tree should come down, especially since in two weeks time, my wife and I would be hosting our 3rd Annual Golden Unicorn Arts Festival - about 400-500 people attended last year's festivities.  Some of the wind storms we've been having lately had me more than a little bit worried about the safety of the artisans and the people attending our event.  

          I have a real feeling for trees and their important existence in their quickly disappearing, not-so-healthy environment, so it was a difficult decision to make.  Although I've never attended any activist gatherings to protect the forests from barbarous clear-cutting, I'm not afraid to mention, even if it makes me sound like I'm some kind of sissy, that I've literally hugged more than one tree in my lifetime.  I don't know how the trees felt about being hugged but it made me feel good.  And speaking of trees, I once had about half a dozen huge poplar trees growing along the front of my yard in Nanaimo, BC, much to the chagrin of my next door neighbour, who, being an Albertan, wouldn't have been happy until everything standing higher than a wheat field had been cut down.  I couldn't believe it one day when I came home early, a city-crew were about to cut down the trees (no doubt the neighbour had put them up to it).  The boss of the outfit went on and on about how they were a hazard but finally shut up and drove off when I told him I was heading into the house to phone my lawyer.  I also gave the neighbour a piece of my mind, told him that as long as I lived where I was, those trees were going to remain where they were.  Although I have to admit there was one hell of a lot of leaves to rake up every autumn, I got great delight watching my neighbour raking up the leaves in his yard - because as odd it seems, the majority of them landed there.  

          This morning, while looking out the window at the stack of wood, which had once been the living silver-birch, I watched a flicker poking around in the bark.  I couldn't help thinking that perhaps it was the same little bird that had been trapped in the stovepipe and its presence cheered up the sadness I was feeling for the tree - cheers, eh!