So this afternoon, I went into my workroom, the utility room in the finished basement, to get some supplies for an outdoor project. And I heard this strange rattling coming from the water heater or the furnace.
So I got closer, and I isolated the rattle to the water heater. Crap, I thought, I don’t know who to call when I have problems with a water heater. It’s true, I have a furnace guy, an electrical guy, and a drain guy, and I know who to look for in the white pages if I need concrete work or plumbing. But water heaters? Crikey, I don’t know who to call.
The rattling was accompanied, sometimes, by a weird trill. Almost bird like. I assumed I was hearing something else.
So I grabbed my supplies and did my outdoor chore. While outside, I heard the bird trilling that I’d heard in the basement. I didn’t hear the rattling.
When I got downstairs, I put away my gear and heard the rattling again. I moved close to the water heater to listen closely. Then, I heard the rattling and the trilling with the same locus. Essentially, the duct leading to the chimney.
Why….
I went outside and moved until I was in front of the neighbor’s house. There, upon my roof, upon my chimney, sat the neighborhood woodpecker, a recent immigrant whose better-thought-out knocking I’d heard upon trees in mornings and early afternoons for recent days. He trilled, and then he drummed upon the metal cover on my chimney, as though to challenge the other birds in the area.
Or perhaps just to make me wonder and to fret just a bit.
