Free The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder

said she was sorry to bother me, but she didn’t have anyone else to call. So I went over there to the house we used to live in together. I didn’t mind. I was happy to see her. She had a weird new haircut, but she looked nice. After a few minutesby the fireplace, I heard the noise, a very agitated chirping sound. Really loud. My first thought was squirrel. My wife sat on the love seat behind me with her laptop.”
    â€œGuys?” Trent said.
    â€œShe was trying to find audio recordings of different animals stuck in chimneys. She played them. She apologized again for calling me. I said it wasn’t a problem. I put on my big work gloves, and maybe she had that scared look again. She said, Hold on, does it sound like this? She played another recording of an animal stuck in a chimney. All the recordings of stuck animals sounded like the animal stuck in our chimney. Every one. I got a cardboard box from the basement and I put it inside the fireplace. She said to hold on, she wanted to look up a few more things. I squatted down, and I used the poker to open the damper. When the damper opened, I threw down the poker and got ready to close the flaps on the cardboard box when the squirrel fell out. Wait, my wife said. Don’t do that. At first nothing happened, but then all of a sudden—plop plop plop—three baby birds fell into the box, squawking and cheeping. And then I could hear the mother bird up in the chimney, making all kinds of noise. Now of course the mother bird sounded exactly like the recording of birds that my wife had played on her computer. It’s birds, I said. My wife said, I told you to wait. She read to me from her computer. She said they were chimney swifts. She said they’re common in our area. She said they would have flown the nest in another two to three weeks, all of them, mother and young. There had been no need to doanything. I could have left them alone and they would have been fine, but now what? We both looked down into the box. The baby birds were wet-looking, and covered in black dust. Their eyes weren’t even open. Christ, Henry, she said, they’re federally protected! I took the birds outside in the box, I don’t know why, and then a while later I brought them back in, so at least they could be close to their mother. My wife paced around the room, and then she got back on the love seat with her laptop. She was leaning way over, her hair nearly touching the screen. She said, Please don’t do anything. Just don’t do anything at all. She found something online. Plenty of other people have had baby birds fall out of their chimneys into a box. The thing to do, she said, is place them gently back where they came from. They will try to clutch you with their claws, but they will not hurt you. Try, she said, to reach above the damper and place them on the wall of the chimney. They like to be on a vertical surface. I thought you weren’t supposed to touch baby birds, I said. She said, Just put them back! They’re federally protected . I took off my gloves and one by one I picked up the baby birds and placed them back into the chimney, above the damper. They did grip my fingers with their claws, which made it difficult to let them go. But I did it, and then I closed the damper. The mother and the babies made a terrible racket for a while, but then they all got quiet. Everything seemed to be okay. My wife closed her laptop. She stood up from the love seat, and thanked me for coming, though she wouldn’t look at me. My hands were black from the soot in the chimney.” The pizza guylooked down at his hands. “I told her I thought we made a good team. We saved those birds, I said. She said, We saved those birds from the danger that you created for those birds. Which, she said, feels pretty familiar. Then I left.”
    â€œWhat happened with your consulting job?” Chad said.
    â€œLong story short,” the pizza guy said,