Security Breach At Pond Branch Airfield

News flash from Eddie Price, Airport Information Officer, Pond Branch Airfield*

OK here is the New Stuff from Pond Branch.

Monday morning Sandy tells me we have an occasional noise coming from the fireplace. Many years ago we used to get chimney swifts in the the chimney. Then one year something fell in the chimney and was behind the damper knocking around. The fireplace is a metal insert with a blower and the damper is all part of this one piece box. I was able to unhook the lever that opens the damper, then open it enough that while sitting in the fireplace with a mirror over the top and a flashlight, could see we had a duck in there. I was able to reach over the damper and grabbed the frightened little creature and got him out. After that I put a stretchered metal screen over the chimney to prevent that ordeal from happening again. 

Well something was behind the fireplace. I climbed up the steep roof to the chimney and the guard was cocked up about a inch and a half. I couldn't imagine anything getting in that small crack. Monday evening I gave up.

Tuesday morning Sandy says something is still bumping around. I decided to make another effort. I got in the fireplace and with a screw driver scraped away enough soot to figure out how to open the damper a couple extra inches to get a mirror over it and with a flashlight was able to see a little squirrel. I reached over with a shovel and the critter bolted. I was sure I would be squirrel bit if I proceeded.

Back in time when I started clearing off the Pond Branch Ranch Hill (PBRH) and brought up a 10 x 45 mobile home in '76 there were no squirrels here. A friend at the cotton mill had more than he wanted. I loaned him a trap and he would catch one and I would bring it home after work to release. This went on till one day he had one that had been trapped all day. When I got home and opened the door the squirrel didn't move. I dumped him out and he didn't move. Prodding him along he would run a few feet and just sit there. I read that in addition to being squirrelly, they could have a freaked out brain thing from being caged. He was gone the next morning so don't know how that ended up. But back to the present we had a squirrel behind the fireplace that had been there over 24 hours. I needed to go to work so decided I would drop a rope down the chimney and pray this guy would climb out. I feared he would be in freak mode and just sit there till he died from no water.

When I got to work Sandy called that he climbed the rope alright... Far enough to get over the damper I had left open and he was now sitting in the fireplace. Thank goodness for the glass doors we got just last Spring. I thought of all kinds of ways to try to catch a soot covered squirrel, none a sure thing that he wouldn't get loose and destroy the house.  When I got home Sandy asked if I could open the ash dump. Why didn’t I think of that? The little guy jumped out and ran as Bullet went berserk, and the story ends with everybody living happily ever after.

E off to Springfield for another work day.

*Pond Branch Airfield, I-20 at mile marker 43, west of Columbia, South Carolina. 

Security Breach, Part II

This story certainly made the "Reply to All" rounds on the email circuit.  After a while they tend to morph into something entirely different.  Such was the case here. . .

Eddie followed up on his Brain Crazed Squirrel with this photo:

And that led Brother Baker into Bill the Cat. . .

Bretheren! Yes, it is the one and only Bill the Cat. This photo was taken probably in the mid-eighties, when the Bloom County cartoon strip was going strong.  When we got this animal, he looked JUST like the Berke Breathed character! (Inserted here for comparison.) He was a stray--where mom got ALL her good pets--and one eye was really larger than another. (No, really! He had been fighting and after a few days the swelling went down.) He had chunks of fur missing and was covered with something. I think it was mostly oil. Took a while to get it off. And you know how pleasant bathing a cat is!  The cat was strange all his life. Jim snatched this photo while he was still in High School, I think. . . Hawaii was not kind to the negative, and he says it took him about ten hours of Photoshop work to clean it up! It is the cleanest I have ever seen this image!