This is the problem child. He came to our house for Christmas in 2019 and was perfectly well behaved. This year it seems he’s in a “terrible twos” phase.
Shortly after taking up residence along side our front door we found him down on the ground propped up along side the car!
The fine wire that I used to hang him up and to be virtually invisible had broken. It seems that in a strong south wind he gets a little excited and flys around banging against the house. Being a little slow, me not him, I re-hung him using the same wire but with a new safety improvement. I attached his power cord to a screw that hold the facia on. This way if he slips off his perch at least he wouldn’t hit the ground, or so I thought.
The other night both Shirley and I were woken up at 4 a.m. by our problem child banging around in the wind. As I stood at the front window he decided he’d had enough and jumped off the house. Sure enough the safety system worked and he was now dangling around suspended from the edge of the roof. Well, I couldn’t just leave him there so I got dressed and headed out to rescue him.
However, in the 2-3 minutes it took me to get out there he’d completed his escape and was lying on the ground in the flower bed. Not only that but he took some of his friends with him! A section of aluminium facia was also on the ground with him and about 20′ of Christmas lights were also ripped from the roof and flapping around in the breeze. Well, at 4 a.m. it’s still dark and things couldn’t get much worse so I left him there until after sunrise.
At 9 a.m. I’m out there with a new plan to rescue the boy. The facia is hammered back into it’s original shape without looking too much the worse for wear and easily re-attached. A new 1/16″ stainless steel cable is used to secure him from above and a 150lb test line is used to secure him from below, hopefully to eliminate the flapping around in a breeze. Christmas lights are re-positioned and everything is re-connected and it seems all good.
But we’re not done yet! This morning he’s banging around again! Pretty sure he can’t jump off the wall this time but the string holding him down has some slack in it now allowing the flapping around. So, I teach my self the Trucker’s Hitch knot, the gold standard in securing a load and keeping the string tight. So far, so good.