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September 8, 2006
My Man Vs. Nature
Squirrels are scary
Our squirrel is back.
But, first, let me tell you the story about our squirrel. Last summer, we discovered a squirrel living in a flower pot on the balcony of our condo. This tells more about my lack of planting skills and the fact that I left a flower pot nearly empty of flowers for six months than it does about the ingenuity of the squirrel, but I digress. Said squirrel looked very cute sitting in the flower pot, and being an animal-lover I didn’t want to dislodge the poor thing from his humble abode, especially when he looked so comfortable all curled up in there.
Well, things took a turn for the worst, when the squirrel decided he wanted to upgrade his living arrangements and actually move in with us. He got into our condo by gnawing his way through a screened window, and effectively terrorized my husband for three hours one Saturday afternoon.
I was out shopping with my mom on Michigan Avenue (Chicago). We're in Filene's Basement looking at some fantastic bargains, when my mobile rang. It was my husband calling:
Daren (sounding panicked): There's a squirrel in the house.
Me: There's a what?
Daren: A SQUIRREL! Oh GOD! ACK! He's big. Did I tell you he's big? I mean, he's REALLY BIG.
ME: What's happening?
Daren: He's jumping on our furniture. He's running over everything, and he's not scared of me at all. What do I do? Should I call 911? Oh my God! He's coming for me! Agggh!
Now, my husband is 6'1" and weighs 195 pounds. The squirrel was eight inches long and probably weighed four pounds. Granted, my husband is a pacifist. He doesn't even like to squish bugs, and when we had a mouse problem some time back, we spent some time arguing about whose job it was to throw away the glue trap that had caught Speedy Gonzales. My husband likes to say, "Why do I have to do it just because I'm a guy? That's reverse sexism."
So standing in Filene's and not wanting to leave the Fendi scarves I've just found on sale for $14, I give my husband a "pep talk" or what he calls my "Be a Man" speech. I tell him he ought to a) close the door to contain the squirrel; b) open our patio door; c) try to shoo it out with a broom.
"Uh, yeah, right," my husband says. "I don't think you realize how big this squirrel is. It's BIG. He’s not going to be scared by a broom. You don’t understand what I’m dealing with here. He has NO fear."
I hang up and suddenly start thinking that maybe my husband needs back-up. After all, there was the time he killed a tiny spider in our apartment by emptying an ENTIRE can of Raid on the bug in front of our air conditioner, so our entire apartment smelled like insecticide for a week. I have images of the squirrel wrecking havoc all over my living room and decide to go home to help.
When Mom and I arrive at my place, we find no squirrel, but we do find my husband Daren, dressed in "squirrel fighting gear" which includes his snowboots, his leather jacket, a tennis raquet and a broom. "I've taken care of him," Daren says, sounding proud.
"What are you wearing?" I ask, wondering if Daren's strategy was to convince the squirrel he was insane by wearing snowboots in August.
"I had on flip flops and shorts," he says. "You couldn't expect me to fight a squirrel wearing flip flops and shorts."
Apparently, my husband spent an hour chasing the squirrel around the house wearing everything but a catcher's mask and hockey pads. According to him, he was throwing up his arms and making all kinds of racket, shouting “Get outta here squirrel! Go away.” The squirrel, however, was entirely unfazed, just like me when Daren tells me I ought not to spend so much at Nordstrom's. Mr. Squirrel, apparently, literally ran circles around Daren’s legs to taunt him.
When Daren, exhausted from his show of brute force, took a break to go looking for a phone book to call animal control, he looked up to see that the squirrel had - of its own accord - gone back out the open window, and was sitting there on the outer window sill, as Daren says, "mocking him." In a heroic leap, though, Daren threw himself into the room and slammed down the window, just as the squirrel was planning on coming "back on the offensive."
Well, after that, my husband threw out the flower pot (the squirrel’s home) and we thought that that would be the end of the rodent-with-a-tail. But apparently, he really likes Daren’s Lazy Boy, because the squirrel is back. We caught him trying to gnaw his way through our window AC unit wings this week, trying to get into our bedroom.
“Now do you believe me about how dangerous these things are?” my husband asked me at two in the morning when we were both awakened by the racket the squirrel was making intently gnawing on the plastic. He’d made enough progress to get the tip of his nose through one of our air conditioning slats.
I’m not sure what’s more annoying – the squirrel, or having to tell my husband he was right.
Posted by at 9:45 AM | Comments (8)
Comments
Cara,
I'm with your husband on this one! When I was a kid, my mother used to tell us that squirrels carried rabies and bubonic plague. To this day, my sisters and I will run screaming from squirrels if they come too close. One in my house? Holy furry tails, batman! I might have to move.
The LC Eileen
Posted by: Eileen ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.literarychicks.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 8, 2006 10:08 AM
Okay, this sounds weird, but my mother had this problem recently with a squirrel who wanted to give up the great outdoors for a cushy life inside. She basted the area of the window he kept chewing with Tabasco sauce and he only tried one more time before he gave up for good.
Posted by: Alesia Holliday at September 8, 2006 10:50 AM
We have this squirrel that sits on the fence near one of our windows looking in for hours (this drives the dogs insane). Then without warning he launches himself at the window and slides slowly down, his tiny little fingernails scratching on the glass. It is disturbing. He does this about once a week.
The other Eileen
Posted by: Eileen at September 8, 2006 2:46 PM
Those suckers can bite through anything. Somehow one got locked in my room while I was on out of town. When I came back, it had literally eaten the plastic bottom off the birdcage to get to the birdseed. Now, I wouldn't want the little guy to starve, but can you imagine? That's thick plastic. And my buckwheat hull pillow was no more - I freaked when I saw that mysterious pile of brown on my bed, until I realized what it was.
Oh, and he ate my package of Nutter Butters, too. Have no idea what he did for water. /;+)))
He probably thought your husband was all suited up to play, and he liked the game. So, he's coming back for another round.
Posted by: ZaZa at September 8, 2006 3:18 PM
Oh Cara!
What a picture you can paint. I have been laughing all day at poor Daren's torment. (Tell him I'm sorry - but really now, a tennis racquet and broom!)
I told my husband before we were married in my best, "case closed voice", that HE was in charge of dealing with all offensive creepy-crawlies that crossed our threshold. Unbeknowst to me at the time, he is a pacifist and prefers non-lethal methods of removal. So while he was devising a container to catch and release, I could have several generations in residence. I was forced to take over the job. I am not a pacifist! LOL
Posted by: Cindi at September 8, 2006 6:53 PM
hahaha! That's a great story! We had a squirrel get into our attic and at night he would run back and forth and back and forth. We couldn't sleep. Our attempts to catch him failed. We finally had to call in the professionals and pay for their service. They put a cage up on our roof with bait in it. The squirrel found it a day or so later and in he crawled. Then we had to wait a day for them to pick him up. I felt so bad seeing him up there in the cage. Well, not that bad because we hadn't had a good nights sleep in quite some time. lol They finally got him and said they would release him in the woods nearby. Fortunately, he never found his way back.
Posted by: KimW at September 8, 2006 7:02 PM
My DH and your Daren should probably get together sometime and have a beer and share their most harrowing vermin stories with each other... My husband is afraid of mice and rats. Not the pet kind, the wild ones. I found this out when we had our own little episode with wild vermin....
One morning, early in our relationship, I was in the bathroom and heard a strange noise behind me. I turned around and there was a RAT climbing up the shower curtain!! UGH! I screamed and ran and told my DH what had happened. Of course the rat took off and we didn't know where he was. Next thing I know my DH has grabbed a shovel and is wildly flailing and slamming it randomly on the floor as he frantically moved from the kitchen to the living room, where he proceeded to jump up on the coffee table--still swinging that shovel, I might add... Meanwhile, I am standing on the floor with a broom and a look of bemusement on my face and I consider the fact that my MANLY MAN is the one standing on the table and not I!! I pointed this out to him, and told him that if HE was going to be the one on the table he could at least give ME the shovel!! Nope, wasn't happening!! We finally figured out that the rat had taken up residence in our spare room (all three cats were staring rather interestedly at a certain box). Since my DH and I were planning a short trip that weekend we decided to open EVERY door in the house--closets included (it was a very small house)--and hope that either Mr. Rat chose to leave the way he came in or that the cats would take care of him for us. I mean, there were THREE of them and only ONE of him--seemed like pretty good odds! When we got home a couple of days later Mr. Rat was dead on the floor of my bedroom (can we just say 'ewwww'?!) and we never had a problem with vermin again. Never did figure out where the rat got in at, either...
Posted by: Sheri at September 9, 2006 11:42 AM
I'm a squirrel killer from way back, being the grandchild of farm folks ... to this day, I can still take out a squirrel with a BB gun that doesn't shoot straight. (My husband keeps telling me I'll never hit the squirrels with the BB gun ... but I have two dead squirrels - in as many shots, I might add - that say otherwise!)
Surprisingly, even with my squirrel killing prowess, our squirrels seem to be out to get my husband. He'll be walking along nicely near the trees when a pine cone will suddenly hit him out of the blue ... and there's no breeze. The other day a squirrel did throw a corn cob at me, though, little bugger ... he's on my list now!
Posted by: Jennifer at September 10, 2006 1:06 AM
