If you have been hearing some strange noises from your chimney then the odds are one of two things is happened, the first is that some wild Monterey animal has chosen your chimney as a den site, and you have to admit from the point of view of most varmints it probably looks like a nice deep, hollow tree. The second most likely thing that's happened is that another animal or bird has either fallen down the chimney or flown into the chimney and now cannot find its way out. Unless you decide to kill the animal, smoking it out is not an option, lighting a fire underneath it can only have one result, a quite horrible end for the animal.



Generally the only two Monterey animals that will choose the chimney as a nesting site are raccoons and bats, raccoons seem to have a fairly unique ability of being able to climb up and down the slippery insides of the chimney. If you have an animal that is just trapped and unable to get out of the chimney then by listening to the sounds it makes you should go to tell if it's something like a squirrel or a bird. The generally accepted way to release a trapped animal from your chimney is to lower a large diameter rope or something similar down the chimney which the animal can then climb up and out.

If the trapped animal is a California bird you are going to need to get it down into the fireplace, the usual way to do this is to shut the doors to the fireplace or cover it with a sheet, then opened the damper which will allow the bird to drop down into the fireplace, once the bird is in the fireplace you need to slowly work yourself into a position where you can drop a cloth over the bird completely. Once a bird is covered will come down and you can gently pick it up, remember to wear heavy gloves, and take the bird outside and release it.

Monterey bats will use the chimney as a roost because to them it is ideal roost, it is dark, is almost totally inaccessible to any kind of predator. Before you even think about trying to remove bats from your chimney you need to take into account two things, the first is, killing bats is highly illegal and the second thing is, bats can carry rabies so you don't want one to bite you. If you have bats in your chimney the best thing to do is wait until a migrate for the winter, or if you are the the winter roost, wait until a migrate the other way and then cap your chimney properly remembering some species of bat can get through a half-inch hole.

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