Sliding Neighbour

February 23/07 650 p.m. The Weather Pixie: Niederrhein

Had been thinking only yesterday that nothing much is happening around here right now,well... this morning had been awakened by a phone call from our neighbours warning us, that it might get a little noisy. Turned out, their cat had gotten onto the roof and he (our neighbour) wanted to pick it up. But his wife also told me that she - in vain - tried to convince her husband not to climb onto the roof, too dangerous, but he would not listen. So she begged me to give it a try too. Since we have a big window out of our attic room, I could watch him climbing up onto the landing above the balcony,which is flat and actually the roof of the bedrooms up front. But kitty was sitting on the highest point on the sliding roof. Told our neighbour he should wait,since incidently the chimney sweeper had anounced himself to come in about 1/2 hour.But - he had deaf ears. So ,fascinated, I watched him lean the ladder onto the roof and start to climb up. He reached the cat allright, but when he picked it up, it started to wiggle, which in turn started to upset the ladder, which had no real support on the flat landing. And so both, cat and neighbour,started to slide down the roof on his belly, and boy, were they picking up speed! The last few meters he started rolling, still holding on to the cat and fortunately stopped inches before the final chute of about 5 meters.

And the only witness, Landfrau, almost died of a heart attack!
Later on neighbour phoned and said that his act would have made a nice movie. Chimney sweeper said the final fall might have made him a goner.

No more excitement today!