A pox on this house!?

Last week I reported that I would pay a visit to San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park to explore the historic ship Balclutha. Tours of the Balclutha are offered by your friendly National Park Service Rangers at 2:15 pm each day. Unfortunately, this was not a convenient time for me this week so the Balclutha will have to wait yet another week. So, I share with you a different story.

I got home from work a few weeks ago and I was delighted to see the stairwell light had been replaced. I could actually see the front door and get my key in without the usual routine of balancing my bike on my shoulder while feeling around for the door knob, cursing all the while. Unfortunately, in the morning I saw that there was some “collateral damage” to the light bulb replacement.

A nice new light fixture, but what's missing here? 

The barn swallows, the longest tenured residents of Stilwell Road were unceremoniously evicted with the one fell swoop of a heavy-handed government worker. But they didn’t merely discard the nest. They put it in the box the new light fixture had come in and left it on the landing…as a warning to other barn swallows? To give the kids downstairs an item for show & tell? To offer a sort of coffin for the unborn baby birds?

Nest with eggs inside the cardboard box

Most likely they set it down and forgot about it but that mistake could cost the rest of us. According to Webster’s, (Encyclopedia of Superstitions, that is) it is very bad mojo indeed to mess with a swallow nest. It is said to be good luck to see a swallow flying in the air and bad luck to hurt a swallow or damage its nest. Doing so can cause your cows to give bloody milk or cause your hens to lay no eggs. It is good luck if a swallow nests at your house because it protects everyone inside. However, it is bad luck if a swallow builds a nest at your house and then leaves it unexpectedly. This means the house will be destroyed by fire!

Now I don’t consider myself an especially superstitious person but in the last two weeks a swallow nest was damaged, I read a book called The Big Burn, about the largest wildfire in US history and noticed that this was the state of the smoke detectors in our house.

Sitting on the kitchen table with no batteries

So I took two very important steps to avert the curse. One, I put the swallow nest back in its place. Two, I put the smoke detectors back in theirs. Now, if I can just see one more swallow fly by my window this season it just might bring me some of that good luck back. Anybody know any other things you can put in your house for good luck?

That's better