Cartoon steaming pile with Holy Shit lettering

The trouble was the flue. Every October it filled with jackdaw sticks and the kitchen went brown with smoke, and every October Nan sent Jory up the roof with a brush. That year he went up with a bucket of wet kelp and a bad temper, meaning to pack the chimney and be done with it. Halfway up the ladder he found the gull. It sat on the cowl, big as a Sunday goose, watching him with one yellow eye as if it had been waiting all morning.

"You'll not have my ladder," Jory told it. The gull considered the bucket, then Jory, then let go of something that dropped into the kelp with a soft wet slap. Jory came down swearing. By the time Nan had the fire lit again the chimney roared like a bellows, and the kitchen glowed orange through the cracks of the firebox.

Nan took one look at the grey heap steaming on the hearthstone, then at the kelp, and gave a shriek that rattled every pan on the rack. "Holy mackerel," she said, and Jory, who had never heard her finish a sentence without a hymn in it, finished it for her. The gull never came back to the roof. It sits above the mantel now, painted green, and the flue has drawn sweetly ever since.